Surface and interfaces play a crucial role in the epidemiology of Healthcare Associated Infections (HAIs) - an issue of critical societal importance. Annually HAIs are estimated to cost the NHS £2 billion and cause some 25,000 deaths across the EU.
Repeated warnings from the World Health Organisation and the UK Government’s Chief Medical Officer emphasise the serious global threat of increasing antimicrobial resistance. Infection control, via advanced antimicrobial surfaces, is a key strategy to combat resistance.
Our work sits at the vanguard of this emerging field, seeking to translate frontier research into antimicrobial technology platforms by combining expertise from a variety of fields.
We take a cross-denominational approach, combining perspectives from multiple disciplines including microbiology, pharmacology and biochemistry through to surface science, smart materials design and nanoscience, for a ‘bottom-up’ research approach.
This is combined with high-grade modelling to yield detailed insights into molecular and biological responses at surfaces and to establish structure-property relationships, with the aim of understanding and closely controlling these interactions.
Through this research method we aim to provide an academic critical mass across several research fields to develop new processes and technologies to tackle antimicrobial resistance.