Janet L. Ellzey was born in Corpus Christi, TX, on December 10, 1954. She received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 1978 and 1980, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1985.From 1985 to 1987, she was an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Wisconsin, Madison. She then worked as a staff scientist at the Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC, from 1987 to 1990. Since then, she has been an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin. Her primary research interests are in combustion and fluid mechanics.
She is a member of the Combustion Institute and the American Physical Society.