Kathryn C. Zoon was born in 1949 in Yonkers, New York. She received her bachelor’s degree with honors in chemistry from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in 1970 and a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Johns Hopkins University in 1976. She was the only female in her chemistry classes at RPI in the 1960s.

From 1977 to 1980, she was a fellow at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). She worked with Nobel Laurate Christian B. Anfinsen on the purification and characterization of interferon, a key player of the immune system’s first line of defense against viral infections. They were the first to sequence a human interferon alpha protein, which opened the door to genetic engineering of this interferon and many other important biological protein medicines. Dr. Zoon continued her research on interferon throughout her career.