Gunnar Kahlmeter

A clinical microbiologist (MD, PhD), GK has worked in clinical microbiology since 1971 and in the field of antimicrobial resistance since 1972. He has more than 40 years of experience in leading people in practical microbiology and in science. Having achieved an MD at the medical faculty of Lund University, Sweden, in 1979, and a doctoral thesis on pharmacokinetics and toxicity of aminoglycosides also in 1979, GK spent 1971 - 1984 in the University of Lund, Sweden. He was Assistant Professor, medical faculty, Lund University from 1984 and Associate Professor, medical faculty, Uppsala University from 2004. Between 1985 – 2016, he headed up three clinical microbiology laboratories and for 20 years has been the head of the Swedish national reference laboratory on phenotypic susceptibility testing of bacteria. In 2001, GK was asked to rejuvenate and develop EUCAST (the European Committee on Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing) and between 2002 – 2012 served as its chairperson and since then as the EUCAST Technical Data Coordinator and webmaster. In 2002-03 he developed and systemized the EUCAST MIC distribution website (freely available at http://mic.eucast.org) and since then international contributions are added. In 2010 he financed and developed the dedicated EUCAST Development Laboratory (the EUCAST EDL), now employing 3 – 6 staff with Erika Matuschek as the senior clinical scientist, and he is still head of the EDL. In 2004 he set up the EUCAST website which he has managed for EUCASTsince then. Over the last 30 years, Dr Kahlmeter has served on the boards of many societies including the European Society for Clinical microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID) and in 2012 – 14 as its president, and on many committees, such as the Swedish Reference Group of Antibiotics, European advisor to CLSI (USA), the BSAC working party on antimicrobial susceptibility testing, NEQAS (the UK external quality assessment programme), EARS-Net (the European AMR surveillance programme). He has published in excess of 200 scientific publications between 1971 and today.