Ala grew up in Tirgul Vertiujeni, a small village in the north part of Moldova. In 2000, she moved to Iasi, Romania for her high school studies. Afterwards, she went to France where she received in 2010 a MSc degree in Chemistry at the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées of Rouen. She continued her doctoral studies with Professor Jieping Zhu at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland investigating novel copper catalyzed difunctionalization of doubles bonds. In 2015 she joined the Hartwig group at UC Berkeley as a postdoctoral researcher founded by SNSF. Her research focused on developing several strategies for C-H functionalization of polyethylenes, amines, and alcohols. In 2018 she moved to University of Cambridge and joined the Gaunt group as Herchel Smith Postdoctoral Fellow, where she worked on photocatalytic transformations. Ala started her independent career at University of Bonn in 2021 working on transition metal catalysis. In her spare time, Ala loves spending time with her family, practicing yoga, playing badminton, cooking, and travelling.