AMR Seminar: Erin Duffy, Gates Foundation

Cornell Center for Antimicrobial Resistance Research & Education Fall Seminar Series 2026 Title: The Bottlenecks Biology Gave Us - and the Ones We Built - in the Discovery of New Antibiotics Speaker Bio: Dr. Erin Duffy is a Senior Program Officer on the drug-discovery team at the Gates Foundation. She leads the Foundation’s efforts in drug discovery for treatment of infections due to antibiotic-resistant Gram-negative bacteria, specifically the Gr-ADI program that is co-funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation and Wellcome. Before joining the Gates Foundation last December, Erin spent six years as the chief of Research & Development at CARB-X, a global partnership accelerating drug discovery and early clinical development pipeline of diagnostic, prevention and treatment solutions for bacterial infections, including those caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Following entry into the pharmaceutical arena at Pfizer in the mid-1990s, Erin spent most of her career in positions of increasing responsibility at Melinta Therapeutics (founded as Rib-X Pharmaceuticals). Her formal training was at Yale University, where she earned a PhD in physical-organic chemistry and completed a postdoc in macromolecular crystallography.