Kathryn received her BSc. and PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Sheffield. After being a laboratory manager for eleven years at the University of Leicester, she established the Cambridge Centre for Proteomics, University of Cambridge in 2001. She became the Professor in Cellular Dynamics in Department of Biochemistry University of Cambridge in 2012.

She directs a research programme focused on the development and application of technologies to map RNA and protein subcellular localisation on a cell-wide scale. Her research looks at the effect of post transcriptional and post translational processing on location, and the extent of re-localisation in response to cellular stress and disease.

She was awarded the Juan Pablo Albar Proteome Pioneer Award from the European Proteomics Association in 2017 and received the HUPO Distinguished Achievements in Proteomics award in 2018. She was elected as a member of EMBO in July 2020 and Academia Europaea in May 2023.