[citation needed] Woollard was educated at University of London, gaining her undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences in 1991 and gained her Doctor of Philosophy degree at the University of Oxford on fission yeast supervised by Paul Nurse in 1995.
[2][6] Woollard moved to the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge in 1995.
[7] Her research focuses on developmental biology of the nematode model organism Caenorhabditis elegans[8][9][10] particularly RUNX genes.
[11][12] She is currently the Academic Champion for Public Engagement with Research at the University of Oxford, a post which she has held since 2017.
[13][14] In 2013 Woollard presented the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures.