At UNC-Chapel Hill, he was the founding director of the UNC Institute for Pharmacogenomics and Individualized Therapy and held a Fred Eshelman endowed chair.
[10] The then 20-year, longstanding research collaboration with XiangYa Hospital in Changsha China led to McLeod being one of the first western scientists to receive a Foreign 1000 Talent award.
[11][better source needed] In December 2019, McLeod was forced to resign from his position at Moffitt Cancer Center for allegedly improperly failing to disclose ties to the Chinese Thousand Talents Plan recruitment program.
He has founded a number of companies, such as Ortelion (Pharma Ethnobridging), Posterbolt (fabric scientific posters), Clariifi (precision oncology), and Interpares Biomedicine.
[16] McLeod has received a number of awards, honors, and named lectureships, from academic organizations, Coriell Institute, the US Food and Drug Administration, and from Professional Societies.