She is an Ontario Ministry of Research, Innovation, and Science Early Researcher Award holder (2017-2022) and co-editor of the 2017 Palgrave Macmillan book Emerging Genres in New Media Environments. Previously she was an assistant professor in the Brian Lamb School of Communication at Purdue University. She holds a PhD from North Carolina State University, and an MA and BA from the University of Waterloo. In addition to publishing more than 20 scholarly papers, Mehlenbacher's work has appeared in the popular citizen science blogs PLOS Citizen Sci, Discover Magazine’s Citizen Science Salon, and on Scistarter.