Sirin Kale speaks with those leading the charge – and changing the face of science. 

If you were to find yourself in Ladbroke Grove early on a weekday morning, you might see Dr Anna Blakney stride past you, brow furrowed in concentration as she mentally revisits her to-do list. She walks past the coloured facades of Portobello Road and shuttered shops of Westbourne Grove, before arriving at the St Mary’s Campus of Imperial College London. By 7.30am she is in her lab coat and at work. After all, when the hopes of humanity are pinned upon your finding a coronavirus vaccine, there’s really no time to lose.