Merling has dual Romanian and American citizenship. She credits a Romanian mathematics teacher, Mihaela Flamaropol, for sparking her interest in mathematics and in mathematics competitions. She majored in mathematics as an undergraduate at
Bard College, where she received her bachelor's degree in 2009. At Bard, mathematician
Lauren Lynn Rose became a faculty mentor. She continued her studies in mathematics at the
University of Chicago, received a master's degree there in 2010, and completed her Ph.D. in 2014. Her dissertation,
Equivariant algebraic K-theory, was supervised by
J. Peter May. She was a postdoctoral researcher and J. J. Sylvester Assistant Professor at
Johns Hopkins University from 2014 to 2018, working there under the mentorship of
Jack Morava. She joined the University of Pennsylvania as an assistant professor of mathematics in 2018, and was tenured as an associate professor in 2024. ==Recognition==