Ivana Pennisi plays a key role in sample preparation, molecular biology methods development, and product development for ProtonDx. Ivana is a graduate of Catania and Padova University with a Master of Science by Research in Medical Biology, and she received an Erasmus+ grant at the Francis Crick Institute, London. She was offered both an International Max Planck Research School Scholarship in Germany, and a PhD program at Imperial College London. She is completing her PhD working in a multidisciplinary field at the Department of Infectious Disease and Centre for Bio‑inspired Technology, Imperial College, London. Her PhD and research interest include the development of Point‑of‑Care technologies and molecular methods especially for low‑resource settings based on the detection of host‑response‑based gene signatures to discriminate bacterial from viral infections. Ivana has been awarded the Imperial EEE Multidisciplinary Collaboration Award for her outstanding contributions and service during the COVID19 pandemic.