Initially majoring in English, she became interested in environmental science[1] before graduating in 1984 with high honors in chemistry; she also earned the college's Chandler T. White 1916 Research Prize.
She went to Stanford University for graduate study in chemistry, also working as a student researcher at the IBM Almaden Research Center, and supported in part by the Nellie Yeoh Whetten Award of the American Vacuum Society.
She returned to academia in 2019, as an associate professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder.
[6] Michelson was elected to the Alameda County (California) Women's Hall of Fame in 2013,[7] the first woman from Sandia National Laboratories to be so honored.
[1] She was named a Fellow of Optica (formerly the Optical Society of America) in 2017, "for pioneering contributions to the fundamental understanding of laser-radiation interactions with soot particles through laser-induced incandescence, absorption and scattering, and using laser-induced incandescence to assess environmental impacts of carbonaceous particles".