Huyen obtained a PhD from The University of Melbourne on ascochyta blight of chickpea. Her first Post Doc was an ARC linkage project with Prof. Richard Oliver at Murdoch University, working on comparative genomics of legumes. She then spent two years doing research on resistance to Russian wheat aphid. Since 2011, she has been working as a wheat genomicist and geneticist at ACNFP/CCDM on septoria nodorum blotch of wheat.