José Pereira Leal

Writing

Writing is my way of making sense of the world. It complements reading and study: this is where I try to bring ideas together, find connections and understand what I think.

Books

Nonfiction and fiction

Nonfiction

I write nonfiction to make sense of problems that are too large, interconnected or consequential to fit inside a strategy document. It is where scientific evidence, professional experience and wider reading can be brought together into an argument. The process forces me to clarify what I believe, where the evidence is strong and where important questions remain unresolved.

My nonfiction grows from three decades working across science, diagnostics, entrepreneurship and clinical translation. Precision Diagnostics looks back at what it takes to build a diagnostics company; The Import Condition looks forward to the industrial capabilities countries need to secure their diagnostic futures. In both, writing turns accumulated experience into something others can examine, challenge and use.

Fiction

I write fiction to explore questions that sit beyond the reach of analysis. Science can describe what becomes technically possible, but not how people will live with it, what they will believe, what they will fear or what change will cost them. Stories let me examine the places where technology, identity, belonging and human uncertainty meet.

I have always loved reading, and writing fiction feels like reading from the inside. Characters acquire lives of their own, make choices I did not expect and take the story into places I had not planned. That loss of control is part of the attraction. Fiction offers another way of thinking about possible futures: speculative rather than analytical, but driven by the same curiosity about how the world changes and how people change with it.

Precision Diagnostics: A Founder's Journey cover

Nonfiction · Published

Precision Diagnostics: A Founder's Journey

Why diagnostics, not drugs, are the future of medicine

A personal and professional account of what it takes to build diagnostics at the frontiers of medicine. Drawing on nearly thirty years across research, entrepreneurship, and clinical translation, this book offers an insider's perspective on turning cutting-edge science into tools that change patient care.

The Import Condition cover

Nonfiction · Current project

The Import Condition

Diagnostics, sovereignty and the Gulf’s industrial moment

The Gulf's most consequential health infrastructure challenge is not clinical; it is industrial. This book makes the case for why diagnostic sovereignty matters, what supply chain dependency actually costs, and how the GCC's current strategic moment creates both the need and the conditions for building something durable.

A Madness of the Moon cover

Fiction · Published as J.P. Leal

A Madness of the Moon

A novel of loss, identity and the courage to begin again

Dylan Blake came to Cape Cod to hide. He wanted only to grieve in peace. Then a poetry reading changed everything. In the village of Nobska Hole, where artists have always found refuge, science meets superstition, reason collides with legacy, and one man's search for truth becomes a journey toward renewal.

The Custodian of Murjan cover

Fiction · Work in progress as J.P. Leal

The Custodian of Murjan

Work in progress · Expected publication by end of 2026

What would you do if someone offered you the chance to build something truly large, but far from everything you know? What would you do if that person died and left you as custodian of his entire life and dreams? What would you do if everything familiar is gone, and you are now faced with a world whose rules, codes and silences are completely alien to you? What follows is a story about belonging: what it costs, what it requires, and what it means to arrive somewhere so completely that you can no longer remember the person who left.

White papers & frameworks

Formal statements of work and method

White paper · Version 1.0 · 2026

Diagnostics Readiness Levels (DRL)

A Multi-Dimensional Framework for Diagnostic and Biomarker Development

A working proposal grounded in practitioner experience and offered as a structured tool for development teams, investors and evaluators, and as a basis for community refinement.

White paper · In preparation

Zullya white paper

An AI-assisted architecture for longitudinal strategic thinking

A concise account of the problem, method, theoretical rationale, intended use and current evidential limits. The first stable edition is intended to receive a persistent citation record.

Essays & commentary

Ideas before they become projects

Shorter work organised around three evolving territories: diagnostics sovereignty, precision diagnostics, and systems and futures.

02

Diagnostics sovereignty · 24 June 2026

Small Is Better

Why the Gulf’s diagnostics sovereignty moment demands the right industrial architecture rather than another oversized promise.

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04

Diagnostics sovereignty · 18 May 2026

The Plasticware Paradox

How a region that exports the feedstock for molecular medicine still imports nearly every finished component required to practise it.

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Science

Scientific publications

Scientific writing has been a continuous part of my professional life. My peer-reviewed publications span genomics and bioinformatics, systems biology, cancer genomics, biomarker discovery, precision diagnostics and translational medicine.

View the scientific record