Donna Johnstone was trained in pharmacology and physiology, gaining a first class joint honours degree from Manchester University, UK and her PhD from Newcastle University in Experimental Neurology before joining industry. She is the co-author of several patents, has a large number of peer-reviewed articles, and spoken at major conferences globally. She has Russian, French and Japanese as second languages.
She has also been a member of the UK government's working party to generate the Office of Science & Technology White Paper on 'The Rising Tide' - optimising the role of women in science, engineering and technology in the UK, and is a fully trained mentor from the 'Athena' project - a Uk government funded project promoting female academic mentorship. She also works closely with key academic centres globally and has a foundation OU qualification in Humanities.