In 2020, she was selected as one of Nature's 10 for pioneering the randomized controlled trial of a dengue prevention technique using mosquitoes carrying the Wolbachia bacteria.

[1][2] After graduating in 1989[2] she completed two master's degrees, one at the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, United Kingdom (1994) and one at Umeå University, Sweden (1997).

[7] Utarini co-led a randomized controlled trial of the technique employing Wolbachia-carrying mosquitoes in reducing the spread of mosquito-borne diseases, such as the dengue fever, starting from 2016 in Yogyakarta.

[10] In the trial, the city of Yogyakarta was divided into 24 clusters—12 randomly selected to receive the Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes and the rest to serve as control.

[6] Epidemiologists praised the result as "staggering" and "epochal", and an important step in the fight against dengue, which causes about 400 million infections and 25,000 deaths annually, as well as possibly other mosquito-carried diseases.

In addition to coordinating the trial, she played an important role in securing the regulatory approval from multiple government ministries.