AIRLAB: Engineering the Future of Respiratory Infection Science

Our work began during COVID-19, when major gaps became clear in how airborne infection risk was measured and managed. AIRLAB was created to move the field from assumption to evidence, combining clinical insight, engineering, aerosol science, virology, microbiology, infection prevention and patient partnership.

Our flagship programme is NESSIE: Non-invasive Exhaled Size-separated Infectivity Evaluation. Designed in Scotland, NESSIE is a research platform for studying respiratory infection using material collected from exhaled breath. It has been developed to support safe clinical research, improve understanding of respiratory emissions, and explore the future clinical value of non-invasive breath sampling.

Respiratory infections such as pneumonia, influenza and COVID-19 remain major causes of hospital admission, antibiotic use, intensive care treatment and healthcare-associated transmission. Yet clinicians often lack reliable, patient-friendly ways to obtain informative respiratory samples, particularly from people who cannot produce sputum or undergo invasive procedures. AIRLAB is addressing this unmet need by developing new approaches to turn breath into meaningful biological information.

NESSIE is our current research-use platform, developed through multidisciplinary engineering, laboratory and clinical validation, patient involvement and NHS clinical governance. We aim to develop improved usability, scalability, clinical workflow and evidence generation to support future translation.

Our vision is to create a new foundation for respiratory infection science: better evidence for infection prevention, better tools for pandemic preparedness, and new routes towards non-invasive respiratory diagnostics.

We welcome collaboration with clinicians, engineers, scientists, industry partners, funders, students and patient representatives. You can also support our research by taking part in Project NESSIE if you have a confirmed influenza A infection and meet the study eligibility criteria. Visit the Project NESSIE page to learn more about the study and the different ways you can get involved.

AIRLAB is turning breath into measurable biology, and measurable biology into safer, smarter healthcare.