November 12th 2008

Since antibiotics gained widespread use in the 1940s, much of the world has enjoyed relief from many infectious diseases that were likely killers. Yet these brief days in the sun and resultant complacency about these illnesses are over. Victories over diseases that once seemed certain are failing and the hunt for new and effective drugs in today’s fight against antibiotic resistance is urgent.

This sobering public lecture scopes the enormity of drug resistance in bacteria today. It touches on how we arrived at this point and the challenges facing science to find cures. It calls on the healthcare and agricultural sectors and the community to unite in slowing further drug resistance.

Introduced by:
Associate Professor Jock Harkness, Director of Microbiology, St Vincents Hospital

Associate Professor Elisabeth Harry
Liz Harry is principal researcher with the UTS Institute for the Biotechnology of Infectious Diseases. After gaining a PhD at the University of Sydney, she went on to Harvard University as a postdoctoral fellow, revolutionising our understanding of bacterial cell structure by pioneering fluorescence microscopy techniques for 'seeing' the location of proteins in bacterial cells.

After returning to Australia, Liz became an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow and then an ARC QEII Fellow at USYD. Now at UTS she works with industry to develop novel antibiotics that target the process of bacterial cell division. In 2002 she was awarded the Australian Eureka Prize for Scientific research, and in 2008 the ASM Frank Fenner Award, by the Australian Society for Microbiology.

Resources

• flyer (PDF 108k)
• presentation slides (PDF 1.5 MB)
• audio recording (MP3 25 MB)

UTSPEAKS: is a free public lecture series presented by UTS experts discussing a range of important issues confronting contemporary Australia