Prof Markus Seeger is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Medical Microbiology at the University of Zurich. Research in his lab focuses on the structure and function of membrane transporters found in pathogenic bacteria, which includes multidrug efflux pumps belonging to the large class of ABC transporters, as well as lipid and siderophore transporters in Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Prof Seeger holds a PhD from the ETH Zurich (2007) and pursued postdoctoral studies in Cambridge, UK. He received an SNSF professorship in 2013 and an ERC consolidator grant in 2018. Since 2015, he leads the antibiotics platform of the Swiss association Biotechnet with the aim to foster collaboration between academic and industrial partners involved in the development of novel antibiotics and rapid diagnostics. Prof Seeger was actively involved in drafting the synthesis report for the National Research Programme “Antimicrobial Resistance” (NRP 72), where he was heading the report section “Faster diagnostic and new therapeutic approaches”. Further, he acts as an executive board member of the Swiss Round Table on Antibiotics.

Dr Shivangi Shankar trained as a medical doctor and has since worked in community health. Her disciplinary and thematic focus has always been porous, grounded in her experiences as a patient, care provider and professional. She writes extensively, and poetry is a medium of both catharsis and communication for her. Through her writing, she seeks to make embodied aspects of health and living explicit and accessible. She is the second runner-up of the first ‘Poetry Against Superbugs’ Poetry slam organised by Swissnex in India.