Part of the CBRNe team within the Responsible Development and Innovation (ReDI) division, covering AI-associated risks in microbiology.

What this involves

• Biological risk assessment paired with threat modelling, drawing on domain expertise in virology and high-consequence pathogens.
• Building evaluations, red-teaming, and mitigations for LLMs, multimodal models, and agentic workflows, with these models and frameworks deployed across Alphabet surfaces, including the Gemini app, with over a billion active users every month.
• Engaging industry, academia, and government to set rigorous mitigations on dual-use topics.

The 2022 mpox outbreak exposed how little was known about orthopoxvirus immunity. I led serology for the UK response and the studies that followed — characterising immunity after infection, after MVA-BN, and after historic smallpox vaccination, and building the assays needed to measure it.

Key outputs

• First direct comparison of humoral responses after MPXV infection versus smallpox vaccination, and identification of immunodominant antigens.
• Development and diagnostic-accuracy assessment of MpoxPlex, a high-throughput multiplexed immunoassay now used for immunosurveillance.
• Immunogenicity of MVA-BN deployed as prophylaxis, including in children.
• Demonstrated that lateral flow tests are unreliable proxies for orthopoxvirus immunity.
• Serological evidence of clade Ib transmission in South Kivu, DRC.

Technical lead for the UKHSA SARS-CoV-2 serosurveillance laboratory: standing up, evaluating and running the assays behind national serosurveillance, the SIREN healthcare-worker cohort, and vaccine studies. Outputs fed national modelling and JCVI/DCMO policy decisions.

What began as an outbreak-specific response became permanent. The laboratory was established as a standing UKHSA group — Emerging Pathogen Serology — carrying the capability built for COVID-19 forward to other pathogens.

Key outputs

• SIREN: quantified protection against infection from prior infection and vaccination in healthcare workers.
• Defined antibody correlates of protection against reinfection and against Delta breakthrough infection.
• Showed that immune boosting by Omicron depends on prior SARS-CoV-2 exposure.
• Evaluated and implemented commercial serology platforms at national throughput.

Developing assays, and then getting them to run at scale. Starting with molecular diagnostics in diagnostic support at RIPL, then serology R&D, and later setting the direction for both.

Molecular diagnostics

• Research, evaluation and validation of new molecular diagnostics for ACDP 2, 3 and 4 pathogens — viral haemorrhagic fevers (pan-filovirus, CCHF, Lassa), arboviruses (Zika, Rift Valley fever, WNV), and high-pathogenicity bacteria (B. anthracis, Y. pestis, Brucella).
• Routine CL3 culture across a wide range of ACDP 3 pathogens, and a member of the on-call viral haemorrhagic fever diagnostic service.

Serology development

• Oversaw R&D of serology assays for emerging pathogens, such as SARS-CoV-2, Lassa, and mpox, across ELISA, ECLIA, Luminex, MSD, lateral flow, and virus neutralisation (inhibition, pseudovirus and live-virus), some to GLP/GMP standards.
• Pre-emptive method development for priority pathogens within CEPI scope, including Nipah, RVFV, and flaviviruses.
• Sequencing-based serology (PhIP-seq) with custom antigen libraries, resolving immunity not just at the whole-protein level but at epitope-specific binding.

Automation, standardisation & transfer

• High-throughput virology screening, target/hit selection, and deep mutational scanning libraries.
• Transitioning manual assays into automated high-throughput systems, and technology transfer to partners in the Netherlands, Thailand, and Vietnam.
• Applying the first WHO International Standard for anti-SARS-CoV-2 immunoglobulin to harmonise readouts across commercial binding-antibody tests — a prerequisite for pooling seroepidemiology and vaccine-immunogenicity data internationally.

Work on how pathogens move between animals and humans, and whether current surveillance would pick it up.

Areas of work

• Population-level serosurveillance for H5N1 exposure in at-risk groups, using national blood donor samples to size the spillover risk.
• Screening wild UK deer populations for SARS-CoV-2 exposure — reverse zoonosis and the potential for animal reservoirs.
• Horizon-scanning and review work on re-emerging arboviruses, including Oropouche virus.
• Membership of the UKHSA Vector-borne Diseases Technical Group, assessing and categorising vector-borne infection risk in the UK.

Small tools I built to take the tedium out of laboratory data handling. Most run entirely in the browser — nothing is uploaded anywhere, so they are safe to use with unpublished data. All are works in progress; feedback welcome.

My PhD characterised Rv1255c, a TetR-family transcriptional regulator encoded in the RD13 region of Mycobacterium tuberculosis — work on how the tubercle bacillus regulates its own gene expression.

Related collaborative work looked further back, using a marine sponge mycobacterium to reconstruct how virulence evolved in the wider genus.

I initiated and undertook a professional training year focussed on Bacillus anthracis, the causative agent of anthrax, running independent projects on both sides of the problem.

Projects

• Isolating novel anthrax bacteriophages for environmentally friendly anthrax decontamination.
• Expression of anthrax toxin subunits for vaccine testing against clinical samples.

Both involved working and routinely communicating with collaborators at Dstl, Battelle, and NATO. I returned as a research assistant in summer 2015 to complete the work and begin collaboration with Scott Safety, alongside training new research students, presenting at international conferences, and analysing sequencing and bioinformatic data.

Dissertation work characterising prophages in Burkholderia, including the discovery of a novel inducible prophage in B. vietnamiensis G4 and its distribution across the wider species complex.