A geneticist by training, she did her doctoral work at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology and holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge, UK. She holds an honorary doctorate from University of Nottingham, her alma mater. Before joining Nature Publishing Group, she was a postdoctoral researcher at what was then ICRF, now CRUK, in London. She has considerable editorial and publishing experience, having worked as Chief Editor of Nature Reviews Genetics, Senior Editor for genetics and genomics at Nature and Editor in Chief of Nature Communications.

She is passionate about mentorship, research integrity as well as open and equitable research practice. As part of her desire to promote underrepresented groups in research, in 2018 she co-launched the Nature Research Inspiring Science Award for early-career female researchers. She is the editorial champion of diversity, equality and inclusion at Springer Nature. She serves on the advisory board of the University of Oxford Centre for Personalised Medicine and of the International Congress on Peer Review and Scientific Publications; she is a member of the Scientific Advisory Council for the UK Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists and the US National Academy of Science’s Strategic Council for Research Excellence, Integrity, and Trust. She is Fellow of the International Science Council.