Twinning on Functional Antimicrobial Surfaces Testing and Evaluation for Real-world Performance and Sustainability

University of Tartu is the top research university in Estonia and the Baltic States. The objective of FAST-Real (Twinning on Functional Antimicrobial Surfaces Testing and Evaluation for Real-world Performance and Sustainability) project is to strengthen University of Tartus research excellence in the field of antimicrobial surfaces design, development and testing, to educate a community of skilled and motivated researchers in the field, increasing the academic skills, proposal preparation and management competence as well as proficiency in innovation transfer. FAST-Real project will focus on knowledge transfer around three important topics related to antimicrobial surface coatings: i) the development of visible light activated coatings, ii) their efficacy assessment in real-life like conditions and iii) ensuring that their use is not inducing antimicrobial resistance development. The advanced partners in FAST-Real project are chosen to fill these three important knowledge gaps and to generate respective synergy. University of Oulu laboratory of Dr Wei Cao has long-standing experiences with photocatalytic materials, including materials activated by visible light. The group of Dr QunRen at Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology has a long-standing background relevant for real-life like efficacy testing of antimicrobial materials and surfaces. The group of Dr. Frank Schreiber at Bundesanstalt fr Materialforschung und -prfung has focused on antimicrobial resistance evolution in response to bacterial exposure to biocidal compounds over many years. Besides the research-orientated endeavours, the advanced partners will also provide guidance to UTARTU on research networking and project proposal writing, research management, innovation transfer, strengthening co-operation between different institutes within UTARTU, and tackling gender and diversity issues.