Diana grew up in Portland, Oregon and completed undergraduate studies in physics at Harvard before discovering biology. After several field seasons doing research on biological antifreeze in Antarctic fish, she began graduate work at Stanford. There, in Irv Weissman’s lab, she isolated stem cells responsible for germ cell parasitism in a marine ascidian. For her postdoctoral work, she focused on germ cell development in mice, conducting a genetic screen in Kathryn Anderson’s lab.