After receiving her PhD in the lab of Professor Jonas Frisén at Karolinska Institutet in 2005, she worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Professor Li-Huei Tsai at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Marie Carlén was recruited to the Department of Neuroscience at Karolinska Institutet in 2010, and in 2017, she joined the Department of Biosciences and Nutrition.