TARGeTED: Tackling Antimicrobial Resistance through Goal-orientated Thinking in the EPS Disciplines

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a serious threat to human and animal health. The problem is multifactorial, spans across many disciplines and involves stakeholders from right across society's spectrum. Our belief is that by engaging researchers from different disciplines, we can ask new questions and develop new solutions to the AMR challenge. Scientists engaged in EPS can bring novel insights and innovative technologies to many aspects of the AMR challenge but there are barriers to their engagement with goal-orientated, inter-disciplinary research. We have identified the conditions that lead to successful inter-disciplinary research outcomes; receptiveness, understanding, communication, resources and networks. We have put together a programme of activities that will create the time and space for researchers from EPS to engage in thinking about the AMR challenge in such a way that they will be able to identify tractable problems that they can solve. To start with we will focus on areas of research excellence currently being conducted at the University of York that have not to date been applied to AMR research, but promise to provide new insights and innovative solutions. These areas are 'Novel tools for understanding and controlling bacterial behaviour' and 'Novel biosensors and diagnostics'. We recognize that a successful 'Bridging the Gap' programme will bring together collaborations between researchers not yet engaged with the AMR agenda and we have incorporated into our activities strategies to reach these people. The outcome will be an exciting community of inter-disciplinary researchers working on the challenges of AMR that are communicating, sparking ideas, writing papers and applying for further funding.