Melissa Calvillo transferred from Knox College and started at the University of Illinois in the summer of 2000, majoring in psychology. She graduated in the spring of 2002.

She began working with the database team in June 2000 and took on the responsibility of classifying the therevid scientific literature in Mandala. She also worked with the Allerton Biodiversity Blitz data, helping wrap up that project with the support of the Illinois Natural History Survey.