[citation needed] Byrne matriculated from St Margaret's Anglican Girls' School in Brisbane in 1983.

Her other positions include Professor of Molecular Oncology, at the School of Medical Sciences, at the University of Sydney.

[6] While reading scientific articles on cancer research, Byrne noticed odd patterns in publications about a particular gene.

The papers described 'strikingly similar' experiments on a gene that has been linked with childhood leukemia and breast cancer.

She noticed that the papers were describing wrong nucleotide sequences in the context of laboratory experiments performed with cancer cell lines.

[3] A colleague described the importance of her whistleblowing cancer work as "finding fraud and bad science".