Vivli has announced six winning teams from the 2026 Vivli AMR Surveillance Data Challenge, recognizing research that uses shared surveillance data to address questions ranging from national Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) policy and vaccination to emerging resistance and research investment.
Now in its fourth year, the Challenge drew 129 teams from 38 countries, marking the highest participation and broadest global reach in the Challenge’s history. Sixteen finalist teams presented their work to an international judging panel on October 6 and 7.
The Challenge gives researchers eight weeks to analyze data available through the Vivli AMR Register, which brings together industry AMR surveillance datasets for reuse by the research community. The 2026 competition was supported by The Global AMR R&D Hub, Pfizer Inc, Paratek Pharmaceuticals, Johnson & Johnson, Vivli, and an NIH award.1
New this year, Vivli partnered with the Global AMR R&D Hub to introduce the Global AMR R&D Hub Cross-Domain Award, supporting research that combines surveillance and investment data to examine whether research funding is aligned with the burden of antimicrobial resistance.
2026 Award Winners
AMR Global Leadership Award Grand Prize
Anthonio Oladimeji Gabriel, Centre for Clinical Intelligence and Safety, and Olowu Babatunde Ibrahim, Washington State University
Anthonio and Olowu developed a Global Misalignment Index to examine whether investment in AMR research reflects the burden posed by different drug-resistant pathogens.
Using 17.5 million isolate-drug records from the KEYSTONE, ATLAS_Antibiotics, and SIDERO-WT datasets alongside Global AMR R&D Hub investment data, the team estimated that approximately one-quarter of pathogen-directed funding would need to be reallocated to better align investment with disease burden. Their analysis identified Klebsiella pneumoniae and Acinetobacter baumannii as notable areas where high resistance burden coincides with gaps in funding and late-stage drug development.
“The data challenge gave us a chance to model computational skills with infectious disease knowledge. To us, it wasn’t just about crunching numbers; it was about collaborating under pressure to transform raw, complex datasets into meaningful, actionable insights that can drive real-world impact,” said Anthonio and Babatunde.
AMR Visionary Award Grand Prize
Emily O’Neill, LSE Health at The London School of Economics and Political Science; Irene Papanicolas and Omar Galarraga, Brown University; and Catrin Moore, City St George’s, University of London
The team examined whether stronger national action plans on antimicrobial resistance are associated with changes in resistance over time.
Using 20 years of Pfizer ATLAS_Antibiotics data across 50 countries and five WHO priority pathogens, the researchers found that higher-quality national action plans were associated with a significant decline in methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). The findings suggest that the strength of national policy may influence resistance trends and provide a way to assess which elements of AMR strategies are associated with measurable change.
AMR Student Innovation Award
Mahkawnghta Awng Shar, Xin Liu, Xiangyi Wu, and Hein Min Tun, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
The team investigated whether childhood pneumococcal vaccination may have benefits beyond preventing infection, including reducing antimicrobial resistance.
Analyzing 39,029 Streptococcus pneumoniae isolates from 68 countries, the researchers found reductions in resistance following vaccine introduction, with the largest effects among vaccinated children and in countries where resistance levels were initially highest.
“The 2026 Vivli AMR Surveillance Data Challenge provided a valuable opportunity to address a global public health question,” the team said. “This experience highlighted the power of data sharing and collaboration to generate policy-relevant evidence.”
AMR Student Impact Award
Justin Pymento, University of Toronto; Archchana Arulananthan, McMaster University; Shahila Christie, Future Ethos, LLC; and Jiahui (Zoey) Zuo, University of Georgia
The team developed the Resistance-Innovation Gap Index (RIGI), a two-tier framework designed to compare antimicrobial resistance trends with publicly reported research and development funding.
Using surveillance data from the Pfizer ATLAS, Paratek KEYSTONE, and Innoviva Acinetobacter baumannii datasets alongside Global AMR R&D Hub funding data, the project examines whether areas of growing resistance are matched by investment in new antibacterial research. The framework focuses on three WHO-priority Gram-negative pathogen groups and is intended to help identify potential gaps between resistance burden and the publicly visible innovation landscape.
The team also made its analysis workflow and code available through an open project repository, supporting transparency and future methodological development.
“We are honored to receive the AMR Student Impact Award,” the team said. “The challenge brought our team’s different perspectives together and pushed us to grow as researchers. We are grateful to Vivli for making these valuable data available, and we encourage researchers everywhere to take part in future challenges to help tackle antimicrobial resistance.”
AMR Impact Award
Chiara Mastrogiuseppe, Humanitas University; Luca Busani, Andrea Cacioppo, and Guido Gigante, Istituto Superiore di Sanità; and Francesco Cellitti, Sapienza University of Rome
The team developed Mutagraph, an open-source research pipeline and interactive dashboard designed to help researchers make better use of incomplete antimicrobial resistance surveillance data.
Mutagraph combines two modeling approaches to reconstruct unmeasured pathogen-antimicrobial combinations, assess when additional sampling is likely to improve precision, and flag combinations that may warrant closer monitoring for changes in susceptibility. The models were also evaluated on countries and future years excluded from training to test how well the approach could transfer to new settings.
By bringing these functions into a single surveillance tool, the project offers a way to identify gaps in available data and focus attention on resistance patterns that may warrant closer monitoring.
Global AMR R&D Hub Cross-Domain Award
Godswill Imolele Anthony, Helix Biogen Institute, and Richard Gamah Teye, Valley View University
The inaugural Cross-Domain Award went to ARGUS AI, which combines Pfizer ATLAS_Antibiotics surveillance data with Global AMR R&D Hub investment data to identify areas where resistance burden is not matched by research investment.
Drawing on nearly 5 million isolate-drug observations from 71 countries, the analysis identified Acinetobacter as the clearest mismatch between resistance burden and investment. The team also developed an application intended to help funders and policymakers examine those gaps.
“Resistance does not wait for the evidence to be tidy. ARGUS AI asks whether the threats we are losing ground to are the threats we are funding,” said Godswill.
Shared data, different questions
Together, the winning projects show the range of questions that can be addressed when surveillance data are made available for reuse.
All finalist teams are invited to submit their work for publication in the Vivli AMR Open Data Reuse Data Challenge collection in Wellcome Open Research. Winning teams may also submit abstracts to major infectious disease conferences in 2027.
Learn more about the 2026 winning teams and their projects.
1 Funded in part by NIH Award, “Generalist Repository Ecosystem Initiative (GREI),” Other Transaction Agreement No. 1OT2DB000003-01.
About Vivli
Vivli is a nonprofit organization working to advance human health through the insights and discoveries made possible by sharing and analyzing data. Its data-sharing initiatives include the Vivli AMR Register for antimicrobial resistance surveillance data and the Vivli Platform for clinical trial data. Vivli serves as a neutral intermediary between data contributors, data users, and the broader data-sharing community.
For more information, visit www.vivli.org and follow Vivli on LinkedIn.
Contact: Amanda Skarlupka (askarlupka@vivli.org), Rebecca Li (rli@vivli.org)