Kathrin Nowak studied veterinary medicine at the Free University of Berlin and specialises in field research in the One Health context, both from a planning, administrative and implementing perspective. During her time at the Robert Koch Institute (Berlin), she did her PhD on potentially pathogenic E. coli in wild African bats. At the same time, she worked on other projects on zoonotic infectious agents in several African countries, including an interdisciplinary mission to Guinea to investigate the origin of the West African Ebola epidemic (2014). From 2016 to 2021, Kathrin Nowak worked at the RKI as a scientist in a project of the BMG's Global Health Protection Programme, which focused in particular on strengthening diagnostic laboratory capacities in sub-Saharan Africa and on the surveillance of antimicrobial resistance.

Since February 2022 Kathrin Nowak is now working as a scientist at the One Health Surveillance Core Unit at the HIOH.