Dr. Ayelet Erez completed with honors her MD studies at the Medical School in the Technion Haifa. She then started Pediatric residency at Tel Hashomer Hospital followed by a PhD degree in cancer genetics at Tel Aviv University. At the time she realized that a combination of medicine and research was the right track for her and went to Baylor College of Medicine in Houston Texas, where she specialized in clinical genetics and post-doctoral studies in the genetics of rare metabolic diseases. Since returning to Israel in 2012, Ayelet has been a senior researcher at the Weizmann Institute, and works part-time as a consulting physician at the Genetic Institute in Souraski Medical Center. Ayelet's research is guided by questions of clinical significance and focuses on metabolic changes, which either accompany or cause common diseases such as cancer. While in the healthy body there is a constant metabolic balance between the absorption of substances from the environment for energy production and construction, and waste disposal, this balance is distorted during disease.

The purpose of Ayelet's research is to understand the metabolic mechanism of the disease and to identify the differences between the healthy and diseased cell, in order to offer means to improve the ability to diagnose and treat these diseases. For example, Ayelet's laboratory identified changes in the body fluids of cancer patients which may be utilized to detect and monitor disease progression. Combining medicine and research enables Ayelet to complete a full translational cycle that begins with the identification of a clinical question that originates in patients, continues to create an animal model of the disease that enables in-depth understanding of the disease, as well as drug trials, and returns to the patient to optimize treatment.

Ayelet is married and is a proud mother of two daughters.