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Katy Moffat studied for her BSc Hons in Biochemistry at Stirling University and then completed her PhD at the John Innes centre, studying the effects of gene silencing on virus infection in plants. She joined the Immunology group at The Pirbright Institute in 2001 to examine interactions between foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) and intracellular proteins during virus replication.

Katy discovered that FMDV infection lead to a disruption of the cellular protein secretory pathway and the viral protein responsible differed to that of another picornavirus, Poliovirus. In 2006, Katy became part of the Vaccinology group and is currently studying responses of dendritic cells (immune cells) to bluetongue virus (BTV) infection.