[4] She earned her PhD in aeronautics and astronautics engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2014.

[3][7]In 2016, she became a Payload Systems Engineer on the InSight mission,[3] a robotic lander spacecraft that was designed to study the interior of the planet Mars, to where it lifted off on May 5, 2018.

While the mission waited for the spacecraft to land on the surface of Mars, Alibay helped the teams prepare for operations,[7] and she tested the detector equipment.

During surface operations after the February 18, 2021 landing, she was the Tactical Integration Lead and an interface between the Perseverance rover and Ingenuity.

On April 19, 2021, Alibay was part of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory team that successfully made Ingenuity, the first powered-controlled aircraft to fly on another planet.