Dr. Lesley Cheng is the Group Leader of the Neurodegeneration EV Biology and Biomarker Research Laboratory at the La Trobe Institute for Molecular Science (LIMS). She was awarded a Bachelor of Medical Science (La Trobe University) with Honours (Monash University) and a PhD (Monash University) with a PhD Scholarship from Neurosciences Victoria. She trained as a Cell and Molecular Biologist investigating neuronal death and survival.

After her PhD, she undertook a position at the American Hospital Dubai, a reputable hospital in the Middle East, where she developed and validated molecular pathology assays for diagnostic testing of genetic and infectious diseases. She then returned to Australia and joined the laboratory of Prof. Andrew F. Hill at the Bio21 Institute and University of Melbourne where her early post doctoral years focused on developing methods to isolate extracellular vesicles from blood to detect RNA associated biomarkers for diagnostic testing.

Dr. Cheng's research program focus is identifying small RNA biomarkers in neurodegenerative and infectious diseases via ‘Next-Generation’ sequencing. She has devised methods to sequence nucleic acids from limited material such as biological fluids and extracellular vesicles such as exosomes. Dr. Cheng is a cell and molecular biologist with published Bioinformatics experience and her expertise has attracted several international and industry collaborative projects specifically requiring her skills which have resulted in highly cited publications of high quality (h-index = 33). Dr. Cheng is highly active in the exosomal field, serving on panels to provide standardisation in the field. She is an co-inventor of a patent that describes the use of exosomal miRNA to diagnose neurodegenerative diseases where the technology has been licenced to an international biotech company.