Dr Mehrad Hamidian is a Senior Lecturer in Microbiology at the Australian Institute for Microbiology and Infection at UTS. His research focuses on characterising genomic regions that carry antibiotic-resistant genes in Acinetobacter baumannii, (A. baumannii) a bacterium that causes a range of hospital-acquired infections. Mehrad holds an MSc in Medical Microbiology from the Tehran University of Medical Sciences and obtained his PhD in Microbiology in 2014 at the University of Sydney. He completed a Graduate Certificate Degree in Educational Studies (Higher Education) in 2015 at the University of Sydney. Receiving a UTS Chancellor's Research Fellowship in 2018, Mehrad moved to UTS to establish his independent research group studying various aspects of antibiotic resistance in A. baumannii. In 2019, in recognition of his work on antimicrobial resistance (AMR), he was honoured with the prestigious Australian Society for Microbiology (ASM) Jim Pittard Early-Career Award. Mehrad received an ARC DECRA fellowship to study A. baumannii plasmids in 2020. Mehrad’s pioneering discoveries have resulted in over 70 publications and he engages regularly with national and international collaborators. He also led the development of the world’s first online database and plasmid typing scheme for A. baumannii. Outside of his academic work, Mehrad has made an increasing number of contributions to the research community and demonstrated his growing capacity in professional leadership. Mehrad has given invited presentations at national and international conferences, which include a symposium talk at the ASM Annual General Meeting in Sydney in 2022. In the same year, he also served on the 2022 international Acinetobacter conference scientific committee. Incredibly passionate about his work, Mehrad’s ultimate aim is to find ways to understand underlying resistance mechanisms to improve tracking, surveillance and to limit the spread of bacterial drug resistance in opportunistic pathogens.