Professor Forrester obtained her BSc (Hons) and PhD from the University of Edinburgh in 1981 and 1986 respectively.
From July 1986 to 1989 she worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund laboratory.
In 1989 she was awarded a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship from the European Molecular Biology Organisation to train at the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute in Toronto, Canada.
She returned to Edinburgh in 1993 to take up an MRC Senior Fellowship and establish her own research group and was promoted to Reader in 2005.
Her research is focused on identifying and characterising the molecular processes involved in the development of blood cells.
The ultimate goal of this research is to develop methods that allow the production of blood cells in the laboratory from pluripotent stem cells for use in the treatment of diseases including blood disorders.
Her current research is funded by the Wellcome Trust and the Scottish Funding Council and is based in the new Scottish Centre for Regenerative Medicine.