2026 Finalist and Award-Winning Solutions

Congratulations to the awardees and finalists!

Vivli is pleased to announce the awardees of the 2026 AMR (Antimicrobial Resistance) Surveillance Data Challenge. The aim of the Challenge, funded by The Global AMR R&D Hub, Pfizer Inc, Paratek Pharmaceuticals, Johnson & Johnson, an NIH award*, and Vivli, is to promote utilization of the Vivli AMR Register to researchers around the globe and drive advances in the AMR field. 

Decorative imageA total of 129 multidisciplinary  teams with members from 38 countries participated in this year’s Data Challenge, marking the highest participation and broadest global reach in the Challenge’s history.

This year’s award-winning projects reflect the breadth of questions that AMR surveillance data can help answer, from evaluating the impact of national action plans to identifying earlier signals that antibiotics may be losing effectiveness. Together, the projects show how shared surveillance data can be used to generate new evidence, sharpen detection, and inform decisions about how antimicrobial resistance is monitored and addressed. The Challenge culminated in the recognition of six outstanding winners and ten finalists, selected by a distinguished judging panel.

Vivli would like to thank everyone who took part. The submissions reflected an impressive range of innovative ideas and a strong commitment to advancing the global response to AMR. Learn more about the 2026 Data Challenge here.

Grand Prize Winners

AMR Global Leadership Award

Team 13282: Anthonio Oladimeji Gabriel (Team lead, Centre for Clinical Intelligence and Safety) and Olowu Babatunde Ibrahim (Washington State University)

Title: “A Global Misalignment Index for AMR R&D Funding: Quantifying Where Investment Falls Short of Burden, and Where the Pipeline Compounds the Gap”

Expression of Interest

Final Submission

 

AMR Visionary Award

Team 13279: Emily O’Neill (Team lead, LSE Health, The London School of Economics and Political Science), Omar Galarraga (Brown University), Catrin Moore (City St George’s), and Irene Papanicolas (Brown University)

Title: “The Benefits of Having a Good NAP: A Global Quasi-Experimental Evaluation of Antimicrobial Resistance National Action Plans on Bacterial Resistance”

Expression of Interest

Final Submission

Student Innovation Award

Student Team 13334: Mahkawnghta Awng Shar (Team lead, The Chinese University of Hong Kong), Hein Min Tun (The Chinese University of Hong Kong), Wu Xiangyi (Peking University), and Liu Xin (The Chinese University of Hong Kong)

Title: “Vaccines as an AMR Intervention: A Global Staggered-Adoption Event-Study of PCV Introduction and Pneumococcal Antimicrobial Resistance”

Expression of Interest

Final Submission

Student Impact Award

Student Team 13364: Justin Pymento (Team lead, University of Toronto), Archchana Arulananthan (McMaster University), Shahila Christie (Future Ethos, LLC), and Jiahui (Zoey) Zuo (University of Georgia)

Title: “The Resistance-Innovation Gap Index (RIGI): A Two-Tier Framework for Comparing Resistance Trends with Global AMR R&D Funding”

Expression of Interest

Final Submission

Impact Award

Team 13344: Chiara Mastrogiuseppe (Team lead, Humanitas University), Luca Busani (Istituto Superiore di Sanità), Andrea Cacioppo (Istituto Superiore di Sanità), Francesco Cellitti (Sapienza University of Rome), and Guido Gigante (Istituto Superiore di Sanità)

Title: “Mutagraph: Compressing the Susceptibility Network to Infer Unsampled Rates and Anticipate Abrupt Shifts”

Expression of Interest

Final Submission

Global AMR R&D Hub Cross-Domain Award

Team 13292: Godswill Imolele Anthony (Team lead, Helix Biogen Institute) and Richard Gamah Teye (Valley View University)

Title: “ARGUS AI: Detecting Global AMR Innovation-Burden Mismatch with Bayesian Evidence Synthesis”

Expression of Interest

Final Submission

Finalists

Team 13004 from Southern Medical University: Moses Mugerwa (Team lead) and Praise Nimusiima

Title: “Before the Breakpoint: detecting pre-resistance from longitudinal MIC distributions in 845,288 bacterial isolates”

Expression of Interest

Final Submission

 

Student Team 13243 from Kyiv School of Economics: Inna Kucherova (Team lead) and Anna Gurina

Title: “Predicting MIC Creep and Resistance Transition as Early Signals of AMR: Meropenem against Klebsiella pneumoniae and Acinetobacter baumannii”

Expression of Interest

Final Submission

 

Student Team 13272 from Makerere University: Africano Byamugisha (Team lead) and Wilbroad Owor

Title: “AMR ALERT Africa: Active Learning Surveillance Prioritisation for Africa using Bayesian Optimal Experimental Design”

Expression of Interest

Final Submission

 

Team 13302: Robin Dosan (Team lead, Oxford University Clinical Research Unit (OUCRU) Indonesia), Mesyalie Lorenza (Summit Institute for Development), and Anuraj Shankar (Oxford University Clinical Research Unit (OUCRU) Indonesia)

Title: “Federated Reconstruction of Global Antimicrobial-resistance Profiles and Emergence with Latent Class Analysis”

Expression of Interest

Final Submission

 

Team 13305 from Manipal University College Malaysia: Basavaraj Ramappa Poojar (Team lead) and Nagalakshmi Narasimha Swamy

Title: “The Ecological Price of a Prescription: An Evidence-Matrix View of Antibiotic-Driven Ecological AMR Risk”

Expression of Interest

Final Submissions:

 

Team 13319: Jimena Martin Reina (Team lead, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid), Robert Beardmore (University of Exeter), Pablo Catalan Fernandez (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid), and Isabel Garcia Jimenez (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid)

Title: “Decoding the Architecture of Resistance to Optimize AMR Surveillance via ATLAS”

Expression of Interest

Final Submission

 

Team 13340 from Evidence for Better Health NGO: Brian L. Matemba (Team lead), Happiness D. Kajoka, Jesca B. Mwakabumbila, Miriam G. Puschel, and Frijenia G. Sumbai

Title: “Forecasting Pediatric Antimicrobial Resistance Using Spatiotemporal Network Models: Analysis of ATLAS Global Surveillance Data (2004-2024)”

Expression of Interest

Final Submission

 

Team 13353 from Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology Delhi: Tavpritesh Sethi (Team lead) and Jasmine Kaur

Title: “Contextualising resistance trajectories with policy readiness and R&D investment: are global AMR responses aligned with where resistance is high or worsening?”

Expression of Interest

Final Submission

 

Team 13355: Giordano De Marzo (Team lead, Konstanz University), Alfredo De Bellis (Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Center for Health Emergencies), and Chiara Mastrogiuseppe (Humanitas University)

Title: “Connecting the Dots in AMR Surveillance: Revealing resistance structure and anticipating what comes next”

Expression of Interest

Final Submission

 

Student Team 13392: Nicholas Ceaser Taliikwa (Team lead, Kampala International University-Western Campus), Christine Ampereza (Moyo General Hospital), Splendour Masinde (Kampala International University-Western Campus), and Sandrah Namirimu (Kampala International University-Western Campus)

Title: “Transforming AMR Surveillance Data Through Empiric Treatment Reliability Index”

Expression of Interest

Final Submission