Kateryna D. Makova is a Ukrainian-American biologist who holds the Verne M. Willaman Chair in the Life Sciences and is a Professor of Biology in the Eberly College of Science at Penn State University. She earned her Ph.D. in Biology from Texas Tech University and her M.S. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Kiev State University, later completing postdoctoral research at the University of Chicago before joining Penn State in 2003. Makova directs the Center for Medical Genomics and leads an interdisciplinary lab specialising in evolutionary and medical genomics, combining computational and experimental methods to study mutation dynamics across vertebrate genomes. Her research spans topics such as sex chromosome evolution, non-B DNA structures, mitochondrial DNA, and the genomic factors underlying childhood obesity. In 2022, she was recognised with the Masatoshi Nei Innovation Prize in Biology for her contributions to evolutionary genetics and genome biology.