Rachel graduated from Nottingam University Medical School in 1994. She trained in clinical paediatrics in Nottingham, London and the South Western Deanery and she completed subspecialty training in Paediatric Nephrology in Bristol. She was awarded a Wellcome Trust Research Training Fellowship in 2004 and completed her PhD studying circulating mediators of podocyte injury in proteinuric states in 2007. She was appointed to an Academic Clinical Lecturership in 2007. In 2010 Rachel was awarded a Stepping Stones Fellowship from the University of Manchester and a Wellcome Trust Intermediate Clinical Fellowship to establish her research group and to continue her research focussed on understanding mechanisms of glomerular disease. Specifically she aims to understand how the glomerular filtration barrier is formed, maintained during life and altered in disease with a particular focus on cell adhesion and extracellular matrix in the glomerulus.