Rachel Anne McKendry is a British chemist. She is Director of i-sense, a UK-based interdisciplinary research collaboration developing early warning sensing systems for infectious diseases, and was part of the UK's Cross Council Initiative on Antimicrobial Resistance. McKendry is also Professor of Biomedical Nanoscience at University College London, holding a joint appointment in the Division of Medicine and the London Centre for Nanotechnology.

Early life and education

McKendry studied chemistry at

Durham University , mottoeng = Her foundations are upon the holy hills (Psalm 87:1) , established = (university status) , type = Public , academic_staff = 1,830 (2020) , administrative_staff = 2,640 (2018/19) , chancellor = Sir Thomas Allen , vice_chan ...

(

Trevelyan College , motto_English = Truth more readily than falsehood , scarf = , named_for = George Macaulay Trevelyan , namesake = George Macaulay Trevelyan , established = 1966 , principal = Adekunle Adeyeye , vice_principal = ...

), graduating in 1994. She was awarded a PhD from the University of Cambridge in 1999 and won a Girton College, Cambridge Research Fellowship in 1998.

Career and research

After working as a postdoctoral researcher at the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory, McKendry returned to the UK to take up a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Research Fellowship, and to work at University College London. McKendry leads an interdisciplinary research team at the intersection of nanotechnology, telecommunications, big data, infectious diseases and public health. In 2015, she presented a Tedx Talk in Exeter on "The Digital Future of Public Health", in which she discussed early warning systems for disease outbreaks – from SARS to Ebola – being developed along the lines of Google Flu Trends, based on anonymised social media chatter from the world's many billion users of smartphones and other digital devices. She has published many research papers in Nature, Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Materials and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. Recent research highlights include

nanodiamond Nanodiamonds, or diamond nanoparticles, are diamonds with a size below 100 nanometers. They can be produced by impact events such as an explosion or meteoritic impacts. Because of their inexpensive, large-scale synthesis, potential for surfa ...

quantum materials for ultra-sensitive virus detection, cantilever

nanosensor Nanosensors are nanoscale devices that measure physical quantities and convert these to signals that can be detected and analyzed. There are several ways proposed today to make nanosensors; these include top-down lithography, bottom-up assembly, ...

s for phenotypic detection of antimicrobial resistance, and

deep learning Deep learning (also known as deep structured learning) is part of a broader family of machine learning methods based on artificial neural networks with representation learning. Learning can be supervised, semi-supervised or unsupervised. De ...

to support quality assurance and decision support of rapid field-based tests. McKendry also led a review of digital technologies in the global public health response to COVID-19.

i-Sense EPSRC IRC

McKendry is Director of i-Sense, a large interdisciplinary research collaboration set up in 2013 to develop early warning sensing systems for infectious diseases, and funded by the

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) is a British Research Council that provides government funding for grants to undertake research and postgraduate degrees in engineering and the physical sciences, mainly to universi ...

with a total investment of £11million (renewed from 2018).

Membership of panels

* On the Steering Group of the Infectious Diseases Research Network, a mainly UK-based collaborative research project which ran between 2002 and 2015 and sought to reduce the toll of infectious diseases on the NHS, especially tuberculosis, health care associated infection, antimicrobial resistance, hepatitis, and sexually transmitted infections. * Part of the UK Government's Blackett Review panel on Biological Detection which published its report in February 2014, identifying a number of technologies and capabilities that could improve government's ability to detect and respond to an airborne biological attack or infectious disease outbreak. * Formerly an expert to the UK Prime Minister's Council for Science and Technology. *Co-chaired the Digital Medicine Theme of the Topol Review of the NHS, which published 'Preparing the Healthcare Workforce to Deliver the Digital Future' in 2019.

Awards and honours

In 2009 McKendry was awarded the Institute of Physics Clifford Paterson Medal and Prize. In 2014 she received a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award, to assist her study of 'New Paradigms in Connected Global Health for Infectious Diseases.' In 2014 she received a Royal Society

Rosalind Franklin Award The Royal Society Rosalind Franklin Award was established in 2003 and is awarded annually by the Royal Society to an individual for outstanding work in any field of Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and to support the promo ...

for her "scientific achievements, her suitability as a role model and for her exciting proposal to launch a national competition to create mobile phone apps to inspire women to become leaders in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)".

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:McKendry, Rachel Living people British chemists British women scientists Alumni of Jesus College, Cambridge Fellows of Girton College, Cambridge Scientists from London Alumni of Trevelyan College, Durham Year of birth missing (living people)