Sarah J. Coulthurst gained an integrated four year Natural Sciences master's degree, specialising in biochemistry, from the University of Cambridge, UK.
Her Master's project, working with Peter F. Leadlay, was on polyketide syntheses, enzymes that are involved in the synthesis of many antibiotics and other natural products.
This experience changed her plans from intending to take up medicine to follow a research career in microbiology that would allow her to have an impact on human health.
[1] After gaining her doctorate, she stayed with Salmond's group as a post-doctoral fellow and then moved to University of Dundee to work with Frank Sargent on bacterial protein movement.
In 2015 she was awarded the World Cultural Council Special Recognition Diploma and also a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellowship, renewed in 2020.