[1] One of Eaton's self-confessed role models as a child was Spock, due to his rational approach to problem solving.
[1] Her thesis, entitled Molecular analysis of an immunoglobulin heavy chain promoter, was completed under the supervision of Kathryn Calame.
[1] Eaton began her research career working on immunoglobulin heavy chain genes at University of California, Los Angeles, in the laboratory of Kathryn Calame.
[2] In 1988, Eaton switched fields to developmental biology, investigating how cells obtain their tissue identities in the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, while in the group of Thomas B. Kornberg at University of California, San Francisco.
[2][5] Eaton moved to Germany in 1993 to work at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg in the group of Kai Simons, where she combined her expertise in microbiology and developmental biology to investigate how the cytoskeleton helps cells attain their polarity in tissues, using the fruit fly as a model system.
[22] In March 2021, the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) launched a New Venture Fellowship[23] in memory of Suzanne Eaton meant to "[support] young researchers from across the life sciences to enter a new field or bring a new direction to their work.