Charissa Varma studied philosophy of language, philosophical logic, and theoretical linguistics at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, where she graduated with a master's thesis titled "In Search of Nobody's Wig: A Exploration of the Syntactic Semantic Interface of Chomsky's Government and Binding Theory." She began her work on philosophy of biology with Prof. Marc Ereshefsky at the University of Calgary and continued her work with Prof. Sahotra Sarkar at the Biodiversity Biocultural Conservation Lab at the University of Texas, Austin. She is currently working on her PhD in Philosophy.