Achievements 2023
September
Jeremy Barr was featured on the PhageCast podcast to discuss "Building Phage Cocktails Against Hospital Outbreaks".
Karen Lambert was appointed Associate Head of School at the School Curriculum, Teaching and Inclusive Education (CTIE). Congratulations!
August
Trang Do releases a piece titled “What is living with chronic, untreatable ‘superbugs’ like?”.
Anton Peleg and Jhih-Hang Jiang’s team of researchers at the BDI and Central Clinical School (CCS) received $450,000 in funding to research new antibiotics to combat MRSA. https://www.monash.edu/discovery-institute/news-and-events/news/2023-articles/cracking-the-golden-staph-defence
The Centre to Impact AMR announces their Indo-Pac Future Leaders in AMR HDR Student Forum.
July
The Centre to Impact AMR established its Centre Advisory Council.
Jeremy Barr represented the Monash Phage Foundry at the Viruses of Microbes 2023 Conference in Georgia.
Jiangning Song and colleagues published a paper on their newly developed deep learning-based framework, iAMPCN, which identifies antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) and their functional activities. AMPs have the potential to function as alternatives to antibiotics.
Natalia Rosas published a collaborative paper titled “The evolutionary mechanism of non-carbapenemase carbapenem-resistant phenotypes in Klebsiella spp.”
Victor Cardarso was promoted to Associate Professor. Congratulations!
Mike McDonald won the Faculty of Science Dean’s Award for Innovation in Learning and Teaching for his incorporation of hands-on learning in the Master of Genome Analytics.
June
Andrea Whittaker, Trang Do, Mark Davis and Jeremy Barr published a research paper titled 'AMR Survivors? Chronic living with antimicrobial-resistant infections'.
Jiangning Song published a paper titled “iAMPCN: a deep-learning approach for identifying antimicrobial peptides and their functional activities”
The Centre to Impact AMR extends a warm welcome to our new Centre Leaders Dr Kelly Wyres and Dr Simone Li.
May
Centre Leader, Jian Li, was among the 20 Fellows elected to the Australian Academy of Science 2023. Congratulations!
The Centre to Impact AMR published a paper in collaboration with BehaviourWorks Australia, exploring how behavioural changes could help mitigate antimicrobial resistance.
Rhys Dunstan was interviewed by ABC Radio SA and Broken Hill, and 2BS Radio, Bathurst for his paper on phage recognition of bacteria. Also featured on various online reporting channels such as National Tribune, and Phys Org.
April
Cornelia Landersdorfer published a paper titled “Clinical pharmacological considerations in an early intravenous to oral antibiotics switch: are barriers real or simply perceived?”.
March
The Clinical Unmet Needs working group hosted the inaugural event 'Unmet needs in AMR: Clinical problems, Scientific Solutions'. Attended by clinicians, scientists and engineers, vigorous discussions ensued surrounding the challenges of AMR in health settings.
Centre Director, Trevor Lithgow, along with Centre Leader, Anton Peleg, were expert panellists at the Melbourne premiere of the documentary "Salt in my Soul". Based on Mallory Smith's posthumously published memoir, Salt In My Soul offers a look inside the mind of a young woman trying to live while dying. The event hopes to raise awareness of the threat of AMR and the continued need to find more solutions.
The Centre hosts Dr Richard Alm, Chief Scientist of CARB-X. Richard delivered a fantastic presentation on the first 6 years since the inception of CARB-X. Insights into the future of the funding landscape of AMR research.
The Centre to Impact AMR's own 2023 Hartland Oration speaker, Dr Harshini Weerasinghe, presented a 45-minute seminar titled 'Eat to Compete: Understanding immunometabolic interactions that drive Candida auris infection'. Harshini spoke about her work on the metabolic interactions of Candida auris with macrophages during infection.
February
Dr Harshini Weerasinghe from the Traven Lab delivered the 2023 Hartland Oration on the battle between Candida auris and macrophages at the Lorne Infection and Immunity Conference.
Trang Do and Andrea Whittaker delivered an insightful AMR Social Science webinar titled 'AMR Survivors? The social burden of antimicrobial resistant infections'. They question the notion of ‘AMR survivorship’ currently being promoted as part of a public education campaign by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and whether people with diverse AMR experiences really self-identify as ‘survivors’ of a biosocial group.
January
Congratulations to Centre Leader, Jian Li, for his success in obtaining funding via the NHMRC e-ASIA Joint Research Program. Jian Li's research project 'Development of Innovative Antimicrobials for Combatting Multidrug-resistant Gram-negative Bacteria: An integrated multi-disciplinary approach' will integrate cutting-edge computational and experimental approaches to develop new, safer antibiotics to control multidrug-resistant bacterial infections. Funding will start in 2023.
The Centre to Impact AMR extends a warm welcome to Professor Hayley Newton as a new Centre Leader. Hayley is a Professor in Microbiology and HDR coordinator.