During Dr. Byrnes' graduate, post-doctoral and early faculty work of the past 25 years, she has completed substantial work on the
characterization of traumatic central nervous system models, including in vitro and in vivo traumatic brain and spinal cord injury
models in rats and mice. This work began with a characterization of the role of cell cycle in brain and spinal cord injury progression,
followed by a careful consideration of the influence of inflammation in secondary injury after brain and spinal cord damage. In vivo, she 
has explored the effect of injury on neuronal and microglial responses using both immunohistochemical and genetic probing, as well
as non-invasive imaging with MRI and PET. Her work brought to light the chronic nature of microglial activation after brain and
spinal cord injury, demonstrating that microglial gene expression, particularly of pro-inflammatory and pro-oxidative stress related
genes, are upregulated through at least 6 months after injury. Since joining the faculty at the Uniformed Services University, her work
in the injury field has continued, expanding to explore metabolic effects of injury and how this intersects with neuroinflammation and
microglial activation. She now is a tenured professor, with several funded projects to investigate inflammation and metabolic changes in
rodent models of neurotrauma, with a focus on novel therapeutic development targeting microglial responses to injury. Her laboratory
is currently funded by the CDMRP to investigate intranasal insulin as a therapy for brain and spinal cord injury, utilizing multiple
models of mild to moderate brain and spinal cord injury in rodents and gyrencephalic ferrets, the NIH via an STTR to evaluate the
effects of FL2 siRNA in a rodent model of spinal cord injury, and the USU to establish novel PET imaging tracers for identifying
longitudinal pathology changes after neurotrauma.