Marchetti trained as a propulsion engineer before she trained as an officer, which is the order most people on the Board assume is reversed. It isn't. She spent six years on refit crews at Korrin before Fleet Command noticed that the ships she'd touched kept coming back with fewer faults than the ones she hadn't.
Her rise through the Research & Development Division was unusually fast for someone with no combat command on her record. Prototype work under her direction has a reputation for shipping late and working the first time, which she considers a fair trade and Logistics does not always agree with. The two directorates maintain what is generously described as a "structured disagreement" over budget allocation, conducted mostly through memoranda neither of them will characterise as terse.
The Admiral values her for a trait few officers have in equal measure: she says when something isn't ready. R&D proposals that reach the Admiralty Board under Marchetti's signature have a near-perfect adoption record, in part because the ones that weren't ready never left her division.