In this episode of Research Goes Viral, Bailey Atkinson and Charlotte Lewis sit down with Professor Akiko Iwazaki, recipient of the 2025 Sir Michael Stoker Award, to explore the science behind Long COVID and how the pandemic reshaped research overnight.They discuss the leading theories behind Long COVID, including persistent virus, autoimmunity, and reactivation of dormant viruses, and what these could mean for future treatments. Professor Iwasaki also shares insights into rapidly pivoting research during COVID-19 and the importance of clinical trials in finding answers for patients.🔗 Links Find out more about Akiko Iwasaki: https://medicine.yale.edu/profile/akiko-iwasaki/Find out more about the CVR: https://www.cvr.ac.uk Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/mrc-uofg-cvr

A mini podcast exploring new research tracking COVID-19 immunity in Malawi. First author, Dr Mhairi McCormack, explains how infection, vaccination, and variant waves shaped protection in urban and rural communities and why children and people living with HIV may face higher risks. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-22599-7

In this episode, Dan Liu, a newly graduated PhD student from the MRC-UofG Centre for Virus Research, shares the story behind PLM-interact — a new AI-powered model published in Nature Communications.

By teaching artificial intelligence to understand the “language” of proteins, her research helps predict how proteins interact, offering new insights into virus–host relationships and the molecular machinery of life itself.

Read the paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-64512-w