Natasha Olby completed her veterinary degree at Cambridge University in the UK in 1991. After a brief period spent in mixed general practice, she returned to Cambridge University to complete a PhD and post-doctoral fellowship in transplantation strategies in spinal cord injury and a surgical training. Following completion of her PhD and post-doctoral research, she moved to North Carolina State University to do a neurology and neurosurgery residency and she has stayed at NCSU as a faculty member since then. She is currently a Professor of Neurology/Neurosurgery and holds the Dr. Kady M. Gjessing and Rhanna M. Davidson Distinguished Chair in Gerontology. She is a past president of the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine Neurology specialty and has published over 190 scientific papers, as well as more than 35 book chapters. She is co-editor of the BSAVA Manual of Canine and Feline Neurology.  Her research interests are spinal cord injury, neuropathic pain in Chiari like Malformations and neurodegenerative diseases. She has long had an interest in aging of the nervous system, a process that is magnified in neurodegenerative diseases, and she now runs the Canine Neuro-Aging Program. This longitudinal study is focused on quantifying decline in sensory, motor and cognitive function with a view to facilitating pathophysiological discovery and performing therapeutic trials. In all fields, her research uses clinical cases to generate translational data and she focuses on training future clinician scientists.