BSc (Hons I), PhD
At St Margaret’s 1979-1983
Jennifer Byrne is the current Director of Biobanking with NSW Health Pathology and conjoint Professor of Molecular Oncology at the University of Sydney. Prior to accepting her current role, Jennifer was Head of the Children’s Cancer Research Unit at Kids Research, The Children’s Hospital at Westmead in Sydney from 2008-2019.
After graduating from St Margaret’s, Jennifer studied a Bachelor of Science with first class Honours at The University of Queensland where she also received the University Medal. Jennifer started out studying how the brain recovers from injury and then switched to cancer research. After completing her PhD at The University of Queensland, Jennifer worked as a postdoctoral research fellow in Strasbourg, France, and then returned to Sydney where she is currently based. She is notable for her cancer research and her team has been responsible for making discoveries about human genes and their importance in cancer, how research support facilities enable cancer research and, more recently, about the existence of unreliable publications within the cancer research literature.
Jennifer has received several awards for excellence in training and supporting postgraduate students at the University of Sydney. As a result of her work, the Nature journal rated Jennifer as one of their “Ten people who mattered” in 2017.
Of her St Margaret’s experience, Jennifer says: “I was very fortunate to have received a full academic scholarship to attend St Margaret’s. This meant a lot to our family, particularly when the scholarship was awarded. St Margaret’s provided a great education, delivered by teachers who acted as natural feminist role models, and I made many friends for life. The boarding house was strict but, at the same time, living with many rules taught me a lot about which rules need to be respected, and which can be broken. Science is essentially about following and then breaking rules, so I had practice in both at St Margaret’s!”
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