Dr. Daniel Pan, an Honorary Clinical Research Fellow at the University of Leicester and a specialist in Infectious Diseases, was recently awarded a Young Investigator Award at the ESCMID Global Congress 2026. The award, one of the most competitive at this career stage, validates his translational research spanning molecular virology to public health.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Pan was on the frontlines in Leicester, UK, a city with no ethnic majority. He was among the first to identify that ethnic minority groups were disproportionately affected. His large meta-analysis covering around 200 million people revealed that this disparity was primarily driven by a higher risk of infection due to social factors, not increased biological severity.
Pan's research then focused on measuring infectiousness. Standard PCR tests were designed for diagnosis, not for determining if someone is contagious. In Leicester, his team developed a face mask sampling tool that captures exhaled pathogens. Household transmission studies showed mask sampling was significantly better than nasal swabs at predicting actual transmission. The work suggests that measuring exhaled virus, rather than nasal viral load, is key to understanding and controlling spread.
Pan emphasizes the need for standardized terminology around infectiousness and a shift toward tests that define when a person is contagious. Such tools could safely shorten isolation periods, improve pandemic modeling, and transform clinical trials for vaccines and antivirals. He notes that for future pandemics, policy must distinguish between risk of infection and risk of severe disease.