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Ben Harries In January 2020, Zhanfeng Cui, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Oxford, was travelling through Heathrow Airport on his way home from China. When he arrived in London, Cui was surprised to find that there were no temperature checks or tests taking place at the terminal at a time when China was on high alert following the emergence of a new, highly-transmissible respiratory disease. “We [Cui and his colleagues] knew we had to contribute and help stop the spread of the disease in some way,” Cui says. So when Cui returned to Oxford he approached Wei Huang, a professor of synthetic biology, and together they began working on a rapid coronavirus test that could be implemented at airport borders when passengers are making their way through airport terminals. ....