Please consider attending the following: MATERIALS ENGINEERING SEMINAR "Instantaneous Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing" By Aline M. Elquist Purdue MSE Ph.D. Preliminary Exam Advisors: Professor Na Lu and Professor Rodney W. Trice ABSTRACT Rapid determination of drugs effective against bacterial strains is critically important to stopping further spread of an infection and reducing antibiotic resistant bacteria strains. The concentration of antibiotic or even the type of antibiotic effective against the microbe can vary within the same species due to antibiotic resistance. Drug resistant bacterial infections are becoming increasingly prevalent and physicians must prescribe broad spectrum antibiotics to treat infections until antimicrobial susceptibility test (AST) results become available. Broad spectrum antibiotics are expensive, increase the risk of side effects, and increase the risk of inducing antibiotic resistance. Current AST methods require several days to grow the bacteria isolate to a suitable concentration for testing, then monitor the growth of the bacteria in the presence of antibiotics to determine the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of antibiotic that will kill the bacteria. There is a need for a rapid AST method to be developed that can operate at low concentrations of bacteria and determine susceptibility without relying on bacteria growth. Date: Tuesday, November 6, 2018 Time: 10:00 A.M. Place: HAMP G212