Martine Collart obtained her PhD in 1990 at the University of Geneva. She continued her research at Harvard Medical School in Boston with Kevin Struhl, where she identified the NOT genes using a genetic selection in yeast. In 1993, she started her own independent group to pursue the characterisation of the NOT genes, in the Department of Medical Biochemistry of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Geneva. She was appointed Associate Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Medicine in 2004, and Full Professor in 2011.