[1][2][3] Manley studied physics and mathematics at Rice University where she received a Bachelor's degree (cum laude) in 1997.

[4][5] She then went to work as a postdoctoral researcher on lipid bilayer and red blood cell membrane dynamics with Alice P. Gast at MIT.

[6] In 2006, she joined the cell biology laboratory of Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz at the National Institutes of Health as post-doctoral fellow.

Here she developed an optical method (sptPALM) enabling the study of the dynamics of large ensembles of single proteins in membranes and inside cells.

[10] Manley's research group is invested in the field of high-resolution optical instruments and in the investigation of complex biological systems.