Associate Professor Cunliffe is an academic scientist in the Department of Pathology, University of Otago Dunedin School of Medicine. Her research focuses on defining molecular contexts of vulnerability in rare and aggressive subtypes of breast cancer and ovarian cancer. After completing a PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Otago, she undertook post-doctoral training in the Cancer Genetics Branch of the National Human Genome Research Institute, Bethesda MD, USA, then lead the Breast and Ovarian Cancer Research Unit at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen, Phoenix AZ) for 10 years before returning to the University of Otago.