Lea Harrington established her laboratory in 1995, and after obtaining a professorship at the University of Toronto and subsequently at the University of Edinburgh in the field of telomere and genomic instability, she was recruited to the Université de Montréal as a professor in the Faculty of Medicine.
For her contributions to cancer research, Dr. Harrington has received a Terry Fox Young Investigator Award and an International Scholar Award from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Since 2017, she has been the Editor-in-Chief of the Basic Science of Oncology Clinical Teaching Manual, 6th Edition (McGraw-Hill) and Co-Chair of the Medical Review Panel for the Gairdner Foundation.