Top research prize awarded to infectious disease professor

McKendry is a Professor of Biomedical Nanoscience at University College London and director of the i-sense EPSRC IRC in Early Warning Sensing Systems for Infectious Diseases.

Her research lies at the forefront of quantum technologies, deep learning and telecommunications for infectious diseases and public health.

McKendry led the i-sense team to help tackle a range of infections from HIV to the global response to COVID-19, developing new diagnostics and analysing data for public health surveillance.

She is also working to transform the ability to accurately interpret HIV results with the use of so called ‘nanodiamonds’, which have heightened sensitivity to detect virus proteins in blood and urine, and would advance the results of current PCR tests. 

According to McKendry, the £350,000 prize will be used to utilise her team’s recent breakthroughs with nanodiamond diagnostics to greatly improve the early diagnosis of antimicrobial resistance.

If successful, this early-stage research could lay the foundations of next stage translational funding and open applications to other communicable and non-communicable diseases.