Engineering Solutions to Combat Antimicrobial Resistance

Engineering solutions to mitigate antimicrobial resistance social

Exploratory Domains

The workshop is aimed at creating roadmaps for near and long-term engineering research opportunities with the highest potential for positive societal impact.

Four critical areas will be explored:

antimicrobial biomaterials,
alternative antimicrobials,
immune system engineering, and
diagnostic technologies.

This event will be transdisciplinary with respect to engineering disciplines, sectors, and stakeholders interested in combating antimicrobial resistance, including clinicians, medical faculty, nonprofits, and venture capital firms.

THEME OVERVIEW

The United Nations and other organizations have warned of the consequences of failing to address antimicrobial resistance for over a decade. During the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, we observed increasing severity of bacterial and fungal co-infections that were once treatable due to drug resistance.

The time to work toward mitigating antimicrobial resistance using engineering is now.

When combined, approaches in the four critical areas listed above have the potential to help curb antimicrobial resistance, provide innovative solutions for treatment that do not promote resistance development, and develop new detection methods to rapidly stop the spread of resistant microbes.

At this visioning event, participants will roadmap critical areas of engineering that can have a significant impact on the fight against antimicrobial resistance. The goal is to identify specific engineering research directions with the potential for the greatest return on investment that are nascent or require additional exploration.