Prof Constance Schultsz

Professor, Department of Global Health-at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Amsterdam  

Nationality – Netherlands 

Constance Schultsz (MD PhD) is a medical microbiologist based at the Amsterdam UMC which she joined in 2008, and a Professor of Global Health at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She is an Executive Board Member and scientific director of the Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development (AIGHD). From 2003 to 2008 she headed the Microbiology Department at the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. 

Constance has initiated several interdisciplinary research projects together with partners from Europe, Asian and African countries, which address key issues related to AMR, ranging from molecular biology studies to implementation research. She carries out her research in collaboration with epidemiologists, clinicians, biologists, social scientists, economists, and computational scientists. 

Recent work includes One Health projects studying the contribution of livestock to AMR in humans and vice versa; projects that aim to bring innovative solutions to improve surveillance of AMR and antimicrobial usage, relevant to empirical antimicrobial treatment; and projects that look at the contribution of next generation sequencing technologies for studying AMR phenotype prediction and epidemiology. In addition, she initiated and is involved in several activities aimed at capacity building and quality improvement of clinical microbiology, which she considers essential for combating AMR globally. Finally, she is co-founder of a public-private partnership for innovative solutions that can contribute to the global initiatives against AMR (AMR-Global) in order to leverage emerging expertise and technical innovations in the Netherlands globally. 

Constance Schultsz is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the EU Joint Programming Initiative on AMR (JPI-AMR); and the working group Resistance Surveillance of the Dutch Working Party on Antibiotic Policy (SWAB).