By Marie Ducrotoy, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Division of Infection and Pathway Medicine
The anti-microbial Autumn School came to a close as the students from India and the UK presented their projects to the panel of world-leading experts.
The previous day had comprised of a session with the experts, focusing on industrial development and challenges in developing diagnostic AMR devices.
The speakers highlighted the journey from idea to product as a path fraught with pitfalls, while success stories are built on knowing your adversaries, standards and regulations and commercialisation.
Panel discussion on the challenges and opportunities in AMR diagnostics
Edinburgh’s Professor Ramanan Laxminarayan, Director of the Centre for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy joined the experts to take part in a panel discussion on ‘The Challenges of Antimicrobial Resistance and the Opportunities in Diagnostics’ before holding a lecture on ‘The State of the World’s Antibiotics’.
The students were subsequently well briefed to deliver confident, creative and innovative proposals for the AMR diagnostics challenge.
The panel members were hugely impressed at the development of the ideas from the students in such a short space of time, a true testimony to their talent and immense energy.
Student teams had diverse approaches: some focused on adapting existing science while others looked at developing new technology.
Student thinking cut across international borders as they got their head around the differences between the UK and India.
The panel of experts scored each project according to set criteria including innovation and interdisciplinary potential.
The winning team impressed the panel with a truly innovative idea, which is likely to lead to a proposal for a fully funded research programme.
The winning team (from left to right: Ms Surbhi Khurana, Department of Laboratory Medicine, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Dehli, India; Mr Chandradhish Ghosh, Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry Laboratory, Jawharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangalore, India; Mr Eleojo Obaje, Division of Infection and Pathway Medicine, University of Edinburgh; Mr Stavros Yika, Centre for Biological Engineering, Loughborough University)
The students picked out the interdisciplinary aspect of the Autumn School as the highlight of the Autumn School.
The week’s whirlwind journey through AMR diagnostics was brought to a close by Edinburgh’s Professor Till Bachmann, who commended the students for their hard work, expressed his gratitude to the panel and thanked the whole AMR DxC team for their help.
Professor Bachmann was joined by all participants in applauding Shahida Syed for her outstanding job in delivering and organising an inspirational programme.
The Autumn School was an impressive preview of what the competition can contribute to the global AMR discussion. If these next generation researchers coming together for one week can come up with such compelling ideas, just imagine what they come up with in a whole year.
In the end everyone left the Autumn School a winner – with new contacts, ideas and experiences.