Caroline Astell was educated at the University of British Columbia (BSc 1964, MSc 1966, Ph.D. 1970), returned to teach there, and received tenure in July 1985. The fonds relates to her time as a Ph.D. student in the lab and her work with Nobel prize winner Michael Smith. Astell, a member of many scholarly societies, including the American Society of Microbiology and the American Society for Virology, won the Killam Research Award in 1985. In addition, Astell has served on various organizations on campus, including the Graduate Admissions Committee and the Killam Postdoctoral Fellowship Committee. Astell has studied the replication of parvoviruses since the late 1970s and determined the complete sequence of the first autonomous virus in 1982, later extending the research to include the human B19 parvovirus, a newly recognized pathogen. She has published various works, including a number co-authored with Michael Smith, including Thermal elution of complementary sequences of nucleic acids on cellulose columns with covalently attached oligonucleotides of known length and sequence (1972).