Golia grew up in Tehran, Iran, where she got her bachelor's degree in physics from Shahid Beheshti University. She then moved to Montreal, Canada in 2014, where she completed her MSc in physics at Concordia University and later her PhD in neuroscience at the Network Neuroscience Lab at McGill University. During her PhD, Golia focused on understanding how neural communication patterns are organized across multiple scales, from regional dynamics to global functional interactions, and how multi-scale network dynamics manifest as individual differences in behavior and cognition. Golia's research interests revolve around the link between regional neural dynamics and large-scale network organization, and its indications for brain development and computational psychiatry.