Professor Catelas received her Bachelor's Degree in Biological Engineering at the University of Technology of Compiègne in France in 1995, her Master's degree at Ecole Polytechnique of Montreal in 1997, and her Ph.D. at McGill University in 2002, the latter two in Biomedical Engineering.
Her graduate research focused on the characterization of hip implant wear particles and their biological effects, a major cause of implant failure. Upon graduation, she moved to California to pursue her postdoctoral studies in the BioSurgery R&D Group at Baxter Healthcare Corporation, and in Bioengineering at UCLA, focusing on bone regeneration. Continuing working in this field and for Baxter, she spent three months in Vienna, Austria, in 2005 to help establish a cell biology laboratory prior to moving to the R&D Group in Illinois as a Research Scientist.
Professor Catelas joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Ottawa in May 2008, with a cross-appointment at the Faculty of Medicine. As a Canada Research Chair holder (Tier II), in “Bioengineering in Orthopaedics”, her research interests include the study of implant wear particles, their biological effects and possible approaches to modulate these effects, as well as bone regeneration.