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Katalin Vörös was born in 1941 in Mosonmagyaróvár, Hungary, close to the border with Austria. Her father was the local Lutheran church organist and elementary school teacher, and her mother was a nurse. Katalin was only 15 during the 1956 Revolution, but remembers well the student demonstration there, taking part in it with her siblings and father. They were the lucky ones -- some of the older students and factory workers who marched toward the border patrol barracks died in a barrage of bullets from the secret police. Over 80 people died that day.

Katalin and her family fled the country after November 4th, leaving everything behind. While her parents found work in Switzerland, she finished high school in Germany at a Hungarian school filled with refugees. The family immigrated to the U.S. in 1960, where Katalin attended college and became an electrical engineer. She was an active member of the Hungarian-American community in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Eventually, she moved to California and completed her M.S. degree in Engineering Science at the University of California, Berkeley.

She managed the Microfabrication Laboratory for over 25 years. She is a long time active member of the Hungarian Educators Association, where she is webmaster and an editor of the e-Journal Hungarian Cultural Studies. She also runs a Hungarian email list of over 1000 members in the San Francisco Bay Area.