Dr. Mulcahy earned her Ph.D. from the University of Missouri-Columbia, where her dissertation was titled "Alpine Plant-Ant Interactions."  She also has a bachelor of arts from The College of Wooster, OH, where she did research on plant growth and its relation to evolution.  Mulcahy specializes in evolution and plant and animal interactions.

Prior to joining Pitt-Bradford's faculty, Mulcahy served as a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Kentucky, where she was funded by the National Science Foundation through the Center for Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior.  She taught at the Universities of Missouri and Kentucky, and did research at the University of Michigan Biological Station, The College of Wooster, the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory in Bar Harbor, ME, and in Costa Rica and Panama.