Temple-Wood attended Avery Coonley School in Downers Grove, Illinois. A 2017 Wired article described her as "the type of middle schooler who refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, because she thought the idea of making children swear a loyalty oath was bizarre." She won the 2008 DuPage County Spelling Bee. This victory led to her participating in the Scripps National Spelling Bee the same year, where she lasted until the quarterfinals and finished in 46th place. Following the competition, in June 2008 she was honored by the then-lieutenant governor of Illinois, Pat Quinn, along with the other regional spelling bee champions. She went on to attend Downers Grove North High School, where she was a member of the speech team. This team won four medals, one of which was for first place, at the 2011 Illinois High School Association state meet in Peoria. As a senior, she was named to the "top two percent" in 2012.
In May 2016, she graduated from Loyola University Chicago with degrees in molecular biology and Arabic and Islamic studies. She began medical school at Chicago's Midwestern University in the fall of 2016.
Since 2020, she is a medical school graduate and was a practicing physician in Chicago. She later became a practicing physician in Montevideo, Minnesota.
Temple-Wood self-describes herself as queer. In October 2020, on National Coming Out Day, she wrote on Twitter that she was "proud to be a queer physician." She is married and lives with her husband and two cats.
Temple-Wood, Emily (2017). "Rewriting the History of Women in Science". Scientific American. 317 (3): 70–71. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0917-70. PMID 28813402.
Temple-Wood, Emily; Silva, Diane. Exploring the Role of Raw in the Embryonic Nervous System. 56th Annual Drosophila Research Conference. Genetics Society of America. March 4–8, 2015
Temple-Wood, Emily (April 12, 2016). "It's Time These Ancient Women Scientists Get Their Due". Nautilus. Reprinted in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2017. Jahren, Hope, editor. Boston. ISBN 9781328715517. OCLC 1004672002.
Silva, Diane; Olsen, Kenneth W.; Bednarz, Magdalena N.; Droste, Andrew; Lenkeit, Christopher P.; Chaharbakhshi, Edwin; Temple-Wood, Emily R.; Jemc, Jennifer C.; Singh, Shree Ram (November 29, 2016). "Regulation of Gonad Morphogenesis in Drosophila melanogaster by BTB Family Transcription Factors". PLOS ONE. 11 (11) e0167283. Bibcode:2016PLoSO..1167283S. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0167283. PMC 5127561. PMID 27898696.
Labchuk, Andrii; Temple-Wood, Emily; Sherlock, Daniel; Russell, James; Krive, Marianna (January 2023). "A Case of Tachycardia-Induced Cardiomyopathy During Pregnancy: Clinical Presentation and Management". Cureus. 15 (1) e33229. doi:10.7759/cureus.33229. ISSN 2168-8184. PMC 9889206. PMID 36733546.
Rauf, Anis Abdul; Topf, Joel M.; Temple-Wood, Emily (2021). "Abdominal Compartment Syndrome". Handbook of Critical Care Nephrology. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. ISBN 978-1-9751-4409-8.
List of Loyola University Chicago people