She began her scientific career at Williams College, graduating in 2002 as valedictorian with highest honors in chemistry. After spending a year at the University of Cambridge as a Churchill Scholar, she pursued graduate studies in synthetic chemistry and asymmetric catalysis at Harvard under Prof. Eric Jacobsen, receiving her PhD in 2008. From 2008-2011 Emily was an NIH postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School in the lab of Prof. Christopher T. Walsh, where she studied the biosynthesis of bacterial sunscreens. She has also received training in microbiology at the Marine Biology Lab at Woods Hole.