Leyden is bioinformatician and postdoc in Maria Fällman's group. Her research focuses on deciphering adaptation strategies in pathogenic bacteria aiming to identifying novel antimicrobial targets.
Leyden holds Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Biochemistry from Havana University, Cuba. She subsequently pursued her Ph.D. in biomedical informatics at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center in Spain. Building on her expertise, Leyden completed a second Ph.D. in microbial ecology at Uppsala University. Following this, she gained further research experience through a short postdoctoral position in stem cell biology and single-cell transcriptomics at Karolinska Institute in Sweden. Additionally, Leyden earned an industrial internship at Buffalo Pound water treatment plant and Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada, where she had the opportunity to apply her expertise in an enterprise setting. Prior to her current role, Leyden also conducted postdoctoral research at IceLab, where she focused on identifying bacterial determinants that could be targeted for novel antimicrobial development. This line of investigation continues to be a central focus of her postdoctoral position in Maria Fällman lab.
In her current role, Leyden is analyzing niche-adaptation strategies of pathogens, with a special focus on Salmonella enterica. She is also engaged in cross-species data integration, combining genomic and RNA-seq data from 29 diverse pathogens. This approach aims to explore global responses that could potentially serve as targets for broader antimicrobial interventions.