Katherine R. Spindler received a B.S. in Microbiology in 1975 from Purdue University and a Ph.D. in biology in 1981 from the University of California, San Diego. She worked on two viruses in graduate school: the bacteriophage ΦX174 and vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV). For her dissertation with John Holland, she investigated the virus evolution during persistent infection by VSV. Kathy moved to UCLA for her postdoctoral work on adenoviruses with Arnie Berk, where she used molecular biology tools to characterize viral gene expression and viral replication.