Vivli is pleased to announce the awardees of the 2025 Vivli AMR (Antimicrobial Resistance) Surveillance Data Challenge, funded by Johnson & Johnson, Paratek, Pfizer, and a U.S. National Institutes of Health award.* The data challenge aims to stimulate and support the re-use of surveillance data available in the Vivli AMR Register with the goal of developing innovative tools to address AMR, a leading threat to global public health.
A total of 58 teams with members from 22 different countries participated in the third annual challenge. The event offered the opportunity for these multidisciplinary teams to leverage high-quality industry AMR surveillance data and address important questions related to AMR. The Challenge culminated in the recognition of six outstanding winners and one honorable mention, selected by a distinguished judging panel.
This year, Vivli offered two Grand Prizes: the AMR Global Leadership Award Grand Prize and the AMR Visionary Award Grand Prize.
The AMR Global Leadership Award Grand Prize was awarded to a team led by George Priya Doss Chandrakumar (Vellore Institute of Technology) with team members Vasundhara Karthikeyan (Georg August Universität Göttingen), Shraddha Karve (Ashoka University), and Sree Haryini Sivasubramanian (Vellore Institute of Technology). The team used Pfizer’s SENTRY dataset (ATLAS_Antifungals) from the United States and Europe, along with the KEYSTONE, ATLAS_Antibiotics, GEARS, PLEA (Study I), GASAR (Study III), and PLEA (Study II) datasets. They examined the impact of air pollution on resistance to fluconazole in C. glabrata. Notably, their timeseries analysis reveals that time-lag effects play a significant role in predicting trends in resistance.
“Through temporal analysis, we identified a delayed correlation between exposure to airborne contaminants and the emergence of drug-resistant phenotypes, implying that environmental stressors may exert a cumulative influence on microbial resistance trajectories,” said Chandrakumar. “Engagement in the Vivli AMR Surveillance Data Challenge enabled us to harness globally sourced datasets in a novel analytical framework. We are honored that our findings have garnered recognition.”
The AMR Visionary Award Grand Prize was awarded to Claire Vania (St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital) and Anushruti Gupta (Johns Hopkins University). Using datasets contributed by Merck, Pfizer, Shionogi, and Venus Remedies, as well as additional public datasets, they built a model to help predict how different policies and antibiotic use practices might affect the rise of antimicrobial resistance.
“We applied machine learning to global AMR data to predict antimicrobial resistance patterns under different policy scenarios, providing insights that can support policymakers in shaping strategies to combat AMR,” said Vania. “Participating in this challenge was exciting because it allowed us to contribute innovative methods that have a real potential for global health impact.”
The Student Innovation Award winner was a team from the University of Oxford. Team members included Jake Hitch (Team lead), Nicolas Armijo Escalona, Augustine Luk, Ashley Murray, and Natasha Salant. The team used advanced modeling techniques to provide more insight into when to escalate antibiotic treatment compared to conventional techniques. Their approach allows for partial pooling of information across countries, enabling the model to “borrow strength” from datarich regions and improve predictions in countries with sparse surveillance information. This makes it a valuable tool for improving antibiotic decisions, especially in low-resource settings, and helps reduce the use of overly broad antibiotics.
Reflecting on this year’s challenge, Data Challenge Judge Marc Mendelson, MBBS, PhD, Chair of the Vivli AMR Scientific Advisory Board, Professor of Infectious Diseases, and Head of the Division of Infectious Diseases and HIV Medicine at the Groote Schuur Hospital at the University of Cape Town, said, “This year’s Vivli AMR Data Challenge saw another step up in quality of the submitted data solutions and breadth of applications for which the data was used. I would like to congratulate all applicants, our finalists, and especially this year’s winners.”
“Particularly pleasing was the increased number of submissions and high standard of solutions in the student category. Such was the quality of applications that the judges decided to award two prizes in this category. Many congratulations to both winners. It is clear that the use of data science to find novel ways of interpreting and using the data to mitigate AMR is in good hands.”
Data Challenge Judge Ana Cristina Gales, MD, PhD, Professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Escola Paulista de Medicina, Universidade Federal de São Paulo, agrees, “I was impressed by the significant increase in the number of proposals submitted this year, particularly from students. Even more remarkable was the clear improvement in the quality of submissions.”
Dr. Gales also encourages teams to begin preparing early for next year’s competition, “I warmly congratulate the winners and encourage those who were not selected to challenge themselves further and submit even stronger proposals in 2026, taking into consideration a One Health approach to tackle AMR. Our future depends on our commitment to addressing AMR. Antimicrobials are precious and must be safeguarded for future generations.”
The full roster of awards is listed below. Explore the teams’ solutions.
Grand Prizes
- AMR Global Leadership Award Grand Prize: George Priya Doss Chandrakumar (Team lead, Vellore Institute of Technology), Vasundhara Karthikeyan (Georg August Universität Göttingen), Shraddha Karve (Ashoka University), and Sree Haryini Sivasubramanian (Vellore Institute of Technology), “Causal inference of antimicrobial resistance trends: Evaluating the impact of climate and pollution using global AMR data.”
- AMR Visionary Award Grand Prize: Claire Vania (St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital) and Anushruti Gupta (Johns Hopkins University), “A counterfactual machine learning approach to evaluating AMR policy impact.”
AMR Student Innovation award
- Team from University of Oxford, Jake Hitch (Team lead), Nicolas Armijo Escalona, Augustine Luk, Ashley Murray, and Natasha Salant, “Improving evidence-based antibiotic escalation in bloodstream infections in low-resource settings using Bayesian statistical and machine learning approaches.”
AMR Student Impact award
- Team from University of Ibadan, Marvellous Adeoye (Team lead), Joseph Adegoke, Elizabeth Akande, Josephine Mayokun Binuyo, and Bridget Osuji, “Genomic–phenotypic association for AMR drug-target discovery.”
AMR Impact award
- Righteous Kwaku Agoha (Team lead, University of Ghana), Wendy Akushika Dogbegah (University of Ghana), Albert Yao Kudakpo (University of Ghana), Dorvi Ignatus Nunana (University of Ghana), and Stephen Obol Opiyo (The Ohio State University), “Multidimensional surveillance of AMR in North and Central America using species, age, geographic, and genomic insights.”
AMR Innovation award
- Team from Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, Quentin Leclerc (Team lead), Chloé Aupépin, Eve Rahbé, and Laura Temime,“Missing the (break)point? Comparing the use of ECOFFs and clinical breakpoints to study global AMR trends.”
AMR Honorable Mention for Impact
- Team from Institut Pasteur/INSERM/Université de Versailles – Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, Maria Alexa (Team lead), Sophie Chervet, Maylis Layan, Lulla Opatowski, and Camille Schneider, “Tracking the dissemination of emerging Resistant Genes (TrackR-G).”
Contact: Amanda Skarlupka, Rebecca Li
*Funded in part by NIH Award, “Generalist Repository Ecosystem Initiative (GREI),” Other Transaction Agreement No.: 1OT2DB000003-01.
About Vivli
Vivli is a non-profit organization working to advance human health through the insights and discoveries gained by sharing and analyzing data. Data sharing initiatives include the AMR Register for AMR surveillance data and the Vivli Platform for clinical trial data. Vivli acts as a neutral broker between data contributor and data user and the wider data sharing community. For more information, visit www.vivli.org and follow us on LinkedIn and Bluesky.
