Xylena completed her Bachelor's of Science in biochemistry at the University of Washington and her PhD in human genetics at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. During her thesis she studied non-coding DNA and gene regulation in neural crest derived cell types under the mentorship of Andrew S. McCallion. She is currently finishing her post-doctoral fellowship in the Cell Biology and Gene expression unit of the Laboratory of Neurogenetics directed by Mark Cookson. The majority of her work has been focused on prioritizing genes and variants associated with Parksinon's disease using a combination of functional, transcriptional and population based studies in iPSC derived neurons.