Wendy joined Imperial College in May 2007, moving with her research group from the University of Reading where she had previously been based since 1995. She had graduated in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University  and had undertaken her PhD at the Common Cold Unit, Salisbury under joint supervision of Dr David Tyrrell and Dr Fred Brown, studying the human immune response to rhinovirus. She acquired molecular virology skills as a postdoctoral fellow first in the laboratories of Professor Jeff Almond at Reading, and then working with Dr Peter Palese at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York.