[2] Golemis completed her Bachelor of Arts degree in biology and English at Bryn Mawr College in 1983 and her PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1988.

[3] During her time at MIT, Golemis researched retroviruses in relation to specific types of cancer before transitioning to developing protein interaction technology.

[2] As a result of her graduate and post-doctoral work, Golemis was recruited to Fox Chase Cancer Center in 1993 to start her independent laboratory.

[2] Upon starting her laboratory, Golemis's research team were one of the first to describe the complete sequence of the NEDD9 gene and provided an initial functional analysis of NEDD9 protein.

[9] In 2021, Golemis oversaw a research team that found that NEDD9 was a negative regulator of a signalling pathway controlling autophagy in early-stage non-small cell lung cancer.