Raised for her first decade at Scott Base, Antarctica, by parents engaged in long term Cetacean research, Alia actively participated in their project as a child, learning the morphology and syntax of whale languages to an advanced level at the same rate as she learned human languages. She was the first in a series of children trained as “bridges” to communicate with whales.

After completing a degree in marine biology at 12, she migrated to the physical sciences, completing her doctorate in gravitational physics at 16. Her work in Astrophysics brought her to the attention of Starfleet where she worked as a lecturer at the Academy on Earth, guest lecturing at the Vulcan Science Academy. 

Her travels to Vulcan gave her a taste for space exploration and she enlisted in Starfleet to crew on a starship. When the opportunity arose to join the Galileo Station at the edge of known space, she applied for a position on Defiant. Her dream is to find and study other whale-like species that might inhabit the galaxy.