4.1.2016 – Gertler Nicholas: Stopping the rise of the superbugs: antimicrobial resistance, untreatable infections, and how to win the race between drugs and bugs

Title: Stopping the rise of the superbugs: antimicrobial resistance, untreatable infections, and how to win the race between drugs and bugs –

Nicholas Gertler (born Budapest, 1970 as Gertler Balázs Miklós) is co-founder of Galen/Atlantica, a boutique healthcare strategy firm based in Boston. Four weeks after this April 1 talk, Nicholas and his partner will be chairing a 30-nation Summit of scientists and policymakers in London, intended to create the momentum for policy action to address superbugs, based on the questions that science can answer, and to create a research agenda to fill the most pressing gaps in what it cannot. The summit will be attended by the World Health Organization, The OECD, the US Centers for Disease Control, several development banks, and leading scientists and NGOs. It will be hosted by the Wellcome Trust, the world’s second largest medical foundation after Gates, and covered live by the Economist and the Financial Times.

Why would the Wellcome Trust entrust this task to Gertler and his partner? Why are these problems so difficult to solve? And what is it like to work on them? That is what this talk will be about.

Nicholas studied systems engineering at the University of Virginia, technology policy at MIT, and law at Harvard. He has worked as a Washington lawyer, a McKinsey consultant, a partner in a stakeholder strategy firm, and, for a memorable year, at the successor to Matáv.