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Professor Balkwill is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences , and both Professor of Cancer and Head of the Translational Oncology Laboratory at Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry.

She has made significant contributions to research on ovarian cancer. As Centre Lead for Cancer and Inflammation, she is working with her research team to understand the links between cancer and inflammation, and to translate this into novel clinical trials and new treatments.

Professor Balkwill is committed to engaging the public with her team's work, and especially young people with science. She is Director of the Centre of the Cell, which has recently been established as a research centre that does active outreach work in the local community to encourage school children's interests in science. The Centre will open an exhibition to the public in 2008.

Balkwill is author of thirteen books for children on cell and molecular biology which have been translated into twelve different languages. She is involved in a project to communicate the science of HIV/AIDS to the children of South Africa. Two of her books, Staying Alive: Fighting HIV/AIDS and You, Me and HIV, focus on educating children in sub-Saharan Africa who are at high risk for HIV. With the help of charitable funding, these books have been distributed for free throughout southern Africa .

In 2004, she won the prestigious European Molecular Biology Organisation's Award for Communication in Life Sciences, and in 2005, she was awarded the Royal Society Michael Faraday Prize.