Laura was shortlisted from hundreds of applicants to compete at the event in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences session. Her poster was on research into the development of a sensitive technique to detect bacterial toxins in human urine leading to the potential for targeted antibiotic treatment.

On presenting her research in Parliament, Laura said, “I applied to SET for Britain as I thought, after 3 years of work; I had made enough progress to share my results with a wider audience.

She is supervised by Dr Adam Taylor, Director of the Clinical Anatomy Learning Centre at Lancaster Medical School, Dr Bob Lauder  of Biomedical and Life Sciences and Dr Marwan Bukhari,  rheumatology consultant at the Royal Lancaster Infirmary.

Stephen Metcalfe MP, Chairman of the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee, said: “This annual competition is an important date in the parliamentary calendar because it gives MPs an opportunity to speak to a wide range of the country’s best young researchers. These early career engineers, mathematicians and scientists are the architects of our future and SET for Britain is politicians’ best opportunity to meet them and understand their work.”

The Parliamentary and Scientific Committee runs the event in collaboration with the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Institute of Physics, the Royal Society of Biology, The Physiological Society and the Council for Mathematical Sciences, with financial support from Essar, the Clay Mathematics Institute, Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG), the Institute of Biomedical Science, the Bank of England and the Society of Chemical Industry.