Donahue came to Purdue from MIT where she participated in undergraduate research since the second semester of her freshman year.  During her undergraduate studies, she participated in a summer internship. Summer of 2004 found her working as an intern with Dow AgroSciences where she worked on Fluorescent Polarization Technology. Her work helped to improve biochemical assays and was published in the Dow AgroSciences internal scientific journal. Interestingly, today Maia works for Dow AgroSciences near Indianapolis, IN.

Donahue's research at Purdue, where she received her PhD degree in December 2009,  was focused on the modeling and control of cellular processes using the human T cell, a key component of the immune system. Her award-winning presentation in Pittsburgh was on experiment design through dynamical characterization of systems biology models utilizing sparse grids. The work was done in conjunction with Professor Ann Rundell of the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering and Greg Buzzard, Department of Mathematics.