Katharina received Stanford University's first Ph.D. in Stem Cell Biology & Regenerative Medicine in 2015 and has been one of the fastest Ph.D. recipients in world history, earning her degree in just 2.5 years. She was listed on Forbes 30u30 (Science) and has been immersed in the field of biomedical sciences for the past 12 years, starting with her attendance at Germany's Biotechnology High school. She was the first German high school student to be accepted into a research program at Harvard University and has since been awarded several fellowships and awards to do research in 10 labs around the world. During her Ph.D. thesis in the Red-Horse and Weissman labs, Katharina discovered the stem cell that is making up the coronary arteries. Her publication made it into the top 5 of the 2015 NAVBO list and had over 13K shares at international press including the Guardian and IFL science. Katharina attended Stanford Business School's Startup Garage Program and founded OccamzRazor (Razor, Inc) an information technology company with the mission of accelerating scientific discovery.

Katharina is a WED United Nations fellow and public speaker at the UN, Dreamforce, Singularity University, Summit Series, Further Future and SciFoo.

In her free time, Katharina loves to do outdoor sports, dance, and travel. She is a certified snowboard instructor in the Alps, loves to kiteboard, unicycle and rollerblade, skydive in high heals and dance.