[2] She completed postgraduate study at the University of Edinburgh with a PhD in genetics awarded in 1979 for research supervised by Alan Robertson.
[1][16] Mackay's research investigates the environmental and genetic factors that influence quantitative traits.
[17] Her work is undertaken by studying the impact of natural variants and mutations on many behavioural, morphological, physiological and life history traits in fruit flies, which she uses as a model organism.
[17] Mackay is the co-author with Douglas Scott Falconer of the fourth edition of the widely used and highly cited textbook, Introduction to Quantitative Genetics, published in 1996.
[2] “All text published under the heading 'Biography' on Fellow profile pages is available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.” --"Royal Society Terms, conditions and policies".