Educated in New Zealand and Australia, Kate is the chair of numerous startup companies and national committees. She has taught extensively, developed curricula and new degrees, supervised students, published 80 research papers, and worked to help primary school and early childhood teachers in New Zealand to introduce STEM into their classrooms.

Following a BSc (Honours) in Chemistry from the University of Canterbury, Kate completed her PhD at ANU before taking up a postdoctoral position with the Université de Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris. She undertook two years as a research fellow at Princeton before returning to New Zealand as a researcher and academic at the University of Otago. In 2004, Kate joined Victoria University of Wellington. In 2011 she was appointed director of a New Zealand Centre of Research Excellence, the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology.

Kate was the Vice-Provost (Research) at the Victoria University of Wellington for the three years prior to joining UTS in 2018.