Alan Mollins
I am a first year PhD student in Bionanotechnology at the Department of Pure and Applied Chemistry at the University of Strathclyde. My second institution is the One Health Research into Bacterial Infectious Disease (OHRBID) lab at the University of Glasgow.
I completed a BEng in Biomedical Engineering at Strathclyde, where I became interested in sensors and rapid diagnostics, especially having started my degree during the Covid-19 pandemic and witnessing firsthand the impact that lateral flow tests had on society returning to normal.
I became further interested in bacterial infectious disease and global health whilst working on a Tuberculosis diagnostic assay during a year out in industry at LifeArc. This also opened my eyes to where a PhD could take me, prior to that I had been certain I would go straight into industry!
My PhD research focuses on developing a point-of-need biosensing platform for bacterial infectious disease and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) detection at the One-Health interface. The purpose of such a platform is to reduce the overuse of antimicrobials in disease areas that drive the spread of global AMR within human healthcare, agriculture and the environment. The AMR-driving disease I will be targeting with my platform is Bovine Mastitis, which often results in antibiotics being administered to cows without confirmation of infection, bacterial species, or AMR profile.
My early work is focused on the application of electrochemical biosensing techniques, but I hope to investigate optical biosensing techniques too. I am also keen to translate any successful sensor development into a working prototype device to be evaluated in realistic settings.
My time outside of the lab is largely spent on a pool or snooker table, at the gym, or running in one of Glasgow’s many parks!