Leeona obtained a B.Sc (Hons) in Genetics and a M.Med.Sc. (Laboratory Science) from Queen’s University Belfast. She received her PhD in molecular haematology from Trinity College Dublin in 2003. Her research focused on the isolation and characterisation of a novel cellular receptor that is targeted in the treatment of sepsis. She subsequently completed a postdoctoral fellowship on the molecular mechanisms of drug resistance in colorectal cancer at the Department of Oncology at Queen’s University Belfast.

Following her Postdoctoral Fellowship, Leeona completed a 4 year training programme in specialist haemato-oncology laboratory services leading to her registration with the UK Health and Care Professions Council as a Clinical Scientist. She has also been awarded Fellowship of the Royal College of Pathologists (FRCPath) through examination in haemato-oncology and laboratory management.

Leeona joined Almac Diagnostics in September 2009 as a Senior Scientist in the R&D Department. She was appointed as the manager of the newly formed clinical testing laboratory in 2012 and was subsequently promoted as Head of UK laboratory based Operations in January 2014. In this role Leeona assumed overall responsibility for commercial biomarker discovery, CLIA/FDA compliant analytical validation and downstream clinical testing. Since 2014 the Operations Department has grown substantially with the expansion of services from microarray and qPCR to include biomarker services based on Next Generation Sequencing and Nanostring based technologies. Over the same time period she has also overseen the development of a new Manufacturing Department responsible for shipment of clinical specimen to Almac’s testing laboratory and for the manufacture and release of controls and reagents for registrational clinical trials.