Dr. Ehrlich was raised in Austin. She earned her B.S. in Biology from Yale University in 1997. As an undergraduate, she worked in the lab of Dr. Adrian Hayday , studying gamma-delta T cell development and selection. This work piqued her interest in the complexity of fate decisions in the thymus that result in a diverse, but non-autoreactive T cell repertoire.

Dr. Ehrlich obtained her PhD in Immunology from Stanford University Medical School in 2002. While studying with Dr. Mark Davis, she examined the dynamic spatio-temporal recruitment of signaling molecules to the immunological synapse of mature T cells and developing thymocytes. Following her graduate studies,she became a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Lewis Lanier’s laboratory at UCSF, where she studied the role of NKG2D in CD8 T cell co-stimulation.

In 2004, Dr. Ehrlich returned to Stanford as a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Irv Weissman’s lab, where she pursued her interest in T cell development. One avenue of her research was to identify the lymphoid-restricted bone marrow precursor that initiates T cell development. Her other major project was to develop a 2-photon microscopy system to study the cellular and molecular cues that guide developing T cells through different microenvironments within the thymus to ensure their proper development.

In August of 2010, Dr. Ehrlich was recruited to the University of Texas at Austin, where she is now an Assistant Professor in the section of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology and a member  of the Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology. She won a CPRIT recruitment award that will enable her to extend her studies on thymocyte: stromal interactions during normal T cell development to the study of thymic lymphoma generation and progression.