[2] Previously she was Principal Investigator of the Genetics of Deafness research programme at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.
[3] Together with Professor Christine Petit, Steel won the Royal Society Brain Prize 2012, for pioneering work on the genetics of hearing and deafness.
Steel had the opportunity to hear Dorothy Hodgkin speak at Bristol University about insulin, marking her first time encountering a woman in science.
She then received her PhD from University College London for her investigatory work into the inner ear in several deaf mouse mutants.
[6] This led to Steel developing a screening technique, a triaging process, that allowed for the characterization of mutant mice that have hearing and imbalance issues.