EMBARK Webinar April 28

The first instance of our webinar series will take place on April 28, at 2PM CEST. Our invited speaker is Gerry Wright who will talk about Approaches to measure and monitor AMR in various environments. There will also be a speaker from the EMBARK program matched to each invited speaker in this webinar series, and this time Luis Pedro Coelho will talk about their work on quantifying AMR at very large scales.

This will be followed by a short Q&A, including a discussion between the two presenters and the moderator. We look forward to seeing you there!

Register for the webinar here!

Luis Pedro Coelho on building a research group in China

EMBARK PI Luis Pedro Coelho recently wrote a perspective piece in Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology on starting up a research group in China and the specific and general problems he and other young PIs are facing. Well worth a read if you are curious on scientific diversity, and it also highlights a few of the challenges with large international collaborations, just in terms of sheer administration!

Open Postdoc Position Coelho Lab

The Coelho lab is hiring a postdoc to work with understand antimicrobial resistance trends in public metagenome databases directly connected to the EMBARK program. The work is mostly computational, but there can also be some field and lab work (collecting samples).

As all EMBARK positions, this postdoc project will be performed n collaboration with the rest of the EMBARK team, so if your current skill set doesn’t include all of this, but you are interested in the position, then do apply! This position is open until being filled, so send your application as soon as possible.

The lab looks for a candidate with a strong background (including graduate work) in either computational biology or microbiology. If you feel that you are the right person for this position, you can apply hereTo apply: send an email to luispedro@big-data-biology.org with your CV (preferably without a photo) and one representative publication. Later in the process, you will be asked for two reference letters, but they are not necessary for the initial application.

More information is available here: http://big-data-biology.org/positions/pd-embark/

EMBARK Launch

Today is the European Antibiotic Awareness Day and we celebrate by officially launching the EMBARK program.

The primary goal of EMBARK is to establish a baseline for how common resistance is in the environment and what resistance types that can be expected where. That background data will then underpin efforts to standardize different methods for resistance surveillance and identify high-priority targets that should be used for efficient monitoring. In addition, EMBARK will develop and evaluate methods to detect new resistance factors and thereby provide an early-warning system for emerging resistance threats.

EMBARK is an international collaboration funded by JPIAMR. The consortium consists of coordinator Johan Bengtsson-Palme (University of Gothenburg, Sweden), Thomas Berendonk (TU-Dresden, Germany), Luis Pedro Coelho (Fudan University, China), Sofia Forslund (ECRC Max-Delbrück-Centrum für Molekulare Medizin, Germany), Etienne Ruppé (INSERM, France) and Rabaab Zahra (Quaid-i-Azam University, Pakistan).

Through this website, we will release protocols and data as they are generated from the project. Follow our progress towards better monitoring of antimicrobial resistance in the environment here and on Twitter @EMBARK_JPIAMR!