Professor Michaeli earned her Ph.D. in microbiology from Tel-Aviv University in 1985. She then did postdoctoral work until 1990 at the University of California in San Francisco and Berkeley. From 1990 to 1999, she worked at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. She has received the Clore Prize for Excellence, the Moshe Shilo Prize, the Andre Lwoff Prize from the Pasteur-Weitzman Council and French Academy of Science, and, in 2004, the Taubenblatt Prize for Excellence in Medical Sciences. Currently, she holds a position as Full Professor of the Life Sciences Department at Bar-Ilan University in Israel. This is her second HHMI award.

Shulamit Michaeli is examining the regulation of gene expression at the RNA level in parasitic trypanosomes. These organisms are an excellent model for studying RNA processing mechanisms because they regulate their genes mainly at the posttranscriptional level and harbor unique mechanisms such as trans-splicing and editing. Better understanding of the complex RNA world of these parasites, which cause diseases such as Chagas and sleeping sickness, may lead to development of RNA-based therapies.