Anya received her B.S. in Biological Sciences from the University of Maryland, College Park. Following a post-baccalaureate fellowship at the FDA, she obtained a Ph.D. in Molecular Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Maryland School of Medicine. She performed her doctoral research with Dr. Joao Pedra, where she studied tick-borne diseases and characterized a receptor for the Immune Deficiency (IMD) pathway in ticks. Then, she completed a post-doctoral fellowship with Dr. Justin Perry at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center studying how solute carrier (SLC) transporters regulate apoptotic cell clearance by macrophages.

In 2025, Anya started her independent research group in the Lyme and Tickborne Diseases Institute (LTBDI) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.