The 3rd RESISPART/1st RESISFORCE meeting, which is a Norwegian-Indo-Brazilian-Canadian-American consortium, was hosted by the Piracicaba Dental Faculty, FOP, UNICAMP on 15-18 November 2022. In this meeting, partners from eight different institutions worldwide, including FOP-UNICAMP, University of Oslo (UiO), Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), McGill University, University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI), and Forsyth Institute participated. The meeting is part of the project "Partnership for excellence in education, research and innovation in biofilm and antibiotic resistance", which is led by Prof. Fernanda Petersen from UiO and financed by the Research Council of Norway (NFR) and the Directorate for Internationalization and Quality Development in Higher Education (DIKU) through the INTPART programme.
During the meeting, 17 researchers from Norway, India, Canada and the United States, including Professors, postdoctoral fellows and undergraduate and graduate students, developed activities together with FOP professors and graduate students. At the meeting, between November 15th and 17th, students and postdoctoral fellows carried out activities adapted from PBL (problem-based learning) principles based on summaries of work carried out by the research groups, together with Professors as facilitators. In addition, the workshop "Introduction to Resistome: key concepts and hands-on analysis" was held, based on the MOOC course "Exploring the Landscape of Antibiotic Resistance in Microbiomes" developed by the group as part of the RESISPART project. The course is available online.
On November 18th, the 3rd RESISPART/1st RESISFORCE Symposium - Antimicrobial resistance: challenges and prospects was held, which brought together national and international speakers in the areas of public health, medical sciences, microbiology and bioinformatics to understand mechanisms of resistance, microbiological control and discuss policy issues that may impact antimicrobial resistance awareness. The event was open to the entire scientific community. It was attended by over 100 FOP participants and teaching and research institutions in São Paulo.
As parallel activities, Prof. Alix Young, professor at the Faculty of Dentistry at UiO and representative of the undergraduate coordination for academic exchanges, together with Prof. Fernanda Petersen (UiO) and Prof. Pedro Ricomini (UNICAMP), visited UNICAMP's Campinas campus and met with representatives of the Executive Board of International Relations (DERI). The meeting discussed actions to facilitate the exchange between UNICAMP and UiO Dentistry students given the academic agreement signed between the institutions in 2021. Then, the professors visited FOP. Prof. Carolina Steiner, FOP's undergraduate associate coordinator, presented the structure of FOP's undergraduate clinic and the institution's experience in international exchanges. In the end, they visited FOP's laboratories and clinical areas. The first two Master's students from OD-UiO to participate in the exchange program will arrive in Brazil in 2023.
After the FOP activities, the RESISPART/RESISFORCE participants gathered at the Cyan Resort between the 19th and 21st of November to discuss and plan the project's next steps. During this meeting, master's student Leonardo L. Pagotto and doctoral student Mateus X. de Queiroz, students from the Cariology Area at FOP, made presentations about their international experience during their internship at UiO.
