[2][3] She is an associate professor of astronomy at Boston University, where she directs the Institute for Astrophysical Research.
Her undergraduate thesis research on observation of a type II-P supernova, supervised by Frederick R. Chromey, won the undergraduate thesis award of the Astronomical Society of New York.
She went to Columbia University for graduate study in astronomy, earning a master's degree in 1996 and completing her Ph.D. in 2000.
Her dissertation involved radio astronomy of galaxy clusters, and was supervised by David Helfand.
[5] Blanton was named a Legacy Fellow of the American Astronomical Society in 2020.