Natalie received her Ph.D. in Human Molecular Genetics from the UCL Institute of Child Health in 2000 and remained there to do her first postdoc on the complex genetics of cleft lip and palate. In 2001 she was awarded a UCL Bogue visiting fellowship to the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine, John’s Hopkins, Baltimore, Maryland USA. She joined the Department of Medical and Molecular Genetics at King's in 2004 as a postdoc in Prof Chris Mathew’s lab investigating the genetic etiology of the inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD)’ Crohn’s disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC).

In 2011 she received the prestigious Wellcome Trust University Award, a five-year Career Development Fellowship to begin her own independent research program investigating the functional importance of non-coding genome regions that have been strongly implicated in IBD through genome-wide association studies (GWAS). In 2017 she became a Lecturer in the Department of Medical and Molecular Genetics, King's. Her research interests include exploring the functional significance of genetic variations associated with IBD and orofacial granulomatosis (OFG).

Natalie is the group leader for the IBD and Complex Genetics Group.