Professor Byrne is Head of the Children’s Cancer Research Unit within Kids Research at the Children’s Hospital at Westmead, and Professor of Molecular Oncology in the University of Sydney Faculty of Medicine and Health. She was recently recognised as one of Nature's "ten people who mattered in 2017".
She has spent her scientific career analyzing childhood and adult cancers at a molecular level. Her PhD studies mapped gene loss in childhood cancer, and she then identified a novel human gene family during postdoctoral studies in France.
Professor Byrne's research interests include the regulation of lipid storage in cancer cells, the identification of cancer predisposition genes and predictive biomarkers in childhood cancer patients, and the improvement of cancer biobank operations, and systematic research fraud.