Associate Professor Applegate (BAppSc, PhD) is a diagnostic researcher and lead of the Diagnostics Innovation Group at the Kirby Institute, UNSW Sydney. Associate Professor Applegate has over 25 years of experience in regulatory, hospital, industry, laboratory and academic environments, and research focuses on equitable access to quality, simplified infectious disease diagnostics for people who are marginalised or living in remote or resource limited settings.
Associate Professor Applegate is co-lead of RAPID 2.0, a Centre for Research Excellence for the scale up of point-of-care testing for infectious diseases including respiratory, blood-borne and sexually transmitted infections in Australia and the Asia Pacific. Dr Applegate is Co-Director of an ARC Industrial Transformation Research Hub to combat antimicrobial resistance and leads an NHMRC ideas grant to evaluate novel viability assays in sexually transmitted infections. CI Applegate has developed a strong global, multistakeholder network including with diagnostic industry partners and regularly invited to speak at international and national conferences. CI Applegate is co-founder of the inaugural POC23 testing conference for infectious disease, an executive member and global engagement lead subsequent conferences.
Broad Research Areas: Diagnostics, Infectious Diseases, Cohort and Clinical Research, Implementation
Specific Research Keywords: Point of Care Testing, Blood borne viruses, Sexually Transmitted Infections, Antimicrobial resistance