Ann C. Kato took her Ph.D. degree from McGill University in Montreal, Canada and from 1974 to 1977, she did her post-doctoral training at the Collège de France, Paris.

In 1977 she joined the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Geneva where she was Professor in the Department of Basic Neuroscience. Her field of research is related to diseases of the nervous system and in 2003, she received the Bruno and Ilse Frick Prize for ALS research in Switzerland. She was Vice-president and then President of the Swiss Society for Neuroscience from 1996 to 2000. In 1997, she created “Brain Awareness Week” at the University of Geneva and she organized the event until 2004;

She is the founder of the Lake Geneva Innovation Society, an honorary member of the European Dana Alliance for the Brain and was an elected member of the Western European Chapter of the International Brain Research Organisation (IBRO) (2003-2008). She was President of the Swiss Committee for organising the 2008 Federation of European Meeting of Neurosciences (FENS) in Geneva, President of the Frick ALS Foundation (http://frick-fondation.ch), of the Radala Foundation for ALS research (radala-foundation.com) and of the Fonds Falk-Vairant.

Since 2005-2018, she and her husband have been sponsoring girl’s education in Sri Lanka (https://girls-educationsrilanka.ch/) and they have begun a new project focused on empowering women tea workers in Sri Lanka to build better lives for themselves and a better future for their children (https://eliya-association.com). Ann also writes a blog in the Swiss newspaper “Le Temps” entitled “The Brain Under the Microscope” (https://blogs.letemps.ch/ann-kato/).