[1][2] She develops and applies ion-mobility spectrometry–mass spectrometry to the study of molecule structure and is searching for biomarkers for Parkinson's disease.
In 2020 and 2021 she was seconded to work for the Department of Health and Social Care as an advisor on the use case for mass spectrometry as a diagnostic method for diagnosis of COVID infection.
In 2001 Barran joined the University of California, Santa Barbara, working as a postdoctoral fellow with Mike Bowers.
[7] She helped to establish the Scottish Instrumentation and Resource Centre for Advanced Mass Spectrometry at the University of Edinburgh.
[8] In 2013 Barran was appointed to the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology as a Chair in Mass Spectrometry sponsored by Waters Corporation.
She works with several biopharmaceutical companies to apply new mass spectrometry techniques to new drug modalities including monoclonal antibodies.
[citation needed] Her group looks at the structure of biological systems at a molecular level, studying them in the gas and solution phase as well as theoretically.
[12] Ion-mobility spectrometry–mass spectrometry can be used to look at the temperature dependent rotationally averaged collision cross-section of gas-phase ions of proteins.
[23] In 2022, Barran and others published a study of a method to detect Parkinson's disease by analysing sebum using mass spectrometry.