Katsonis, who is born in Austria and is French and Greek, is a leading researcher in the field of molecular switches and molecular motors. After her PhD at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, she accepted a postdoctoral position at the University of Groningen under the supervision of Nobel Prize winner Ben Feringa. After research positions in Leuven and Toulouse, the University of Twente invited Katsonis to set up her own research group in 2011. She received multiple prestigious grants, such as the Veni- and Vidi-grant, an ERC Starting Grant and an Aspasia Grant. Since the beginning of her career she has published 39 articles, of which several were featured in prestigious journals such as Nature, Nature Chemistry, Nature Communications and Angewandte Chemie.