Left to right: Monica Huang, James MacLean, Kamyar Ghofrani, Rosemary MacLean, Renessa Gomes
Monica Hoang had no idea earlier this year that she’d be spending the last few months of her PhD working on the design of a COVID-19 testing kit.
The School of Pharmacy student moved back to her hometown when the University of Waterloo decided to go online for the spring term and planned to do her PhD defence digitally.
Then an old friend in the pharmacy program messaged her to say his colleagues were looking for somebody with a genetics background to join their team. The next day, Hoang was at a meeting in Waterloo’s Velocity startup incubator in downtown Kitchener.
“It happened fast and I sure wasn’t planning to be back in Kitchener every day,” she says. “But the work is important and moving quickly. I’m happy to do what I can to contribute.”
Hoang joined forces with Kamyar Ghofrani (BASc ’17) and James MacLean (BASc ’15), both graduates of the Waterloo nanotechnology engineering program, to respond to a point of care and home diagnostic kit challenge issued by the federal government.
Read the rest of the story on the Waterloo Stories website.