AMR and Wastewater Surveillance Portfolio Adviser

The mandate

The steering committee's recurring question is which antimicrobial-resistance and wastewater surveillance investments produce interpretable, actionable evidence rather than a larger volume of measurements. A sampling network may be geographically broad yet unrepresentative, and an analytical signal may lack a defensible link to a public-health decision. The adviser is asked to challenge these assumptions before resources become committed to scale.

Five days monthly cover evidence review, investigator interviews and a written portfolio challenge discussion. Scientific steering meetings are included in the retainer, with agreed materials supplied six working days ahead. Ad-hoc queries are acknowledged within one business day and answered within four working days when the evidence is already available. Emergency public-health response is not included in this non-executive cadence.

The term is nine months beginning 19 October 2026, with renewal subject to the committee chair's assessment of the remaining scientific question and independence. Mumbai is the coordinating base; remote review predominates, supplemented by planned India sampling or laboratory visits within the reserved commitment. Advice should remain useful after the term by improving the questions the committee asks, not creating permanent dependence on an external voice.

Scientific challenge confers no line authority over investigators and no executive responsibility for surveillance execution or public-health intervention. Investigators retain methodological execution, ethics bodies retain approval and public-health authorities retain intervention decisions. Advice can test whether a proposed surveillance expansion has an adequate interpretation pathway, but cannot endorse clinical treatment guidance or present observational signals as proof of causality.

Concurrent academic or unrelated scientific advisory roles are acceptable if disclosed and compatible with the cadence. A competing funding bid using the same unpublished dataset, supplier sponsorship for a recommended assay or undisclosed authorship interest in a reviewed programme creates a conflict. Information barriers and recusal must be agreed before review; the adviser cannot use confidential portfolio evidence to advance another grant application.

What you will own

• Test surveillance proposals for sampling bias, catchment interpretation and the decision each proposed measurement would support, identifying signals without a credible interpretation or intervention pathway.
• Question resistance and pathogen signal claims against assay limitations, quality exclusions and alternative explanations, asking what independent confirmation would change the portfolio recommendation.
• Shape a portfolio comparison linking scientific value, recurrent operating burden and feasible public-health interpretation, distinguishing initial grant attractiveness from a maintainable surveillance commitment.
• Press investigators to define validation gates before expanding wastewater sites or sequencing coverage, including conditions for stopping expansion despite continued technical capability.
• Challenge AI-assisted analytical proposals on training-data relevance, reproducibility and uncertainty communication rather than novelty, separating credible decision support from an unvalidated predictive claim.
• Recommend disclosure and evidence protocols separating research observation, validated surveillance inference and policy recommendation while preserving investigator, ethics reviewer and public-health authority.

Candidate qualifications

• Demonstrate a substantial scientific career of twenty-two years or more with senior leadership in genomics, infectious disease or public-health surveillance. Give an example where you changed a sampling or portfolio choice because the evidence would not support the proposed interpretation. Explain the technical reasoning and the programme consequence, not merely the committee on which you served.
• Show credible knowledge of antimicrobial resistance, wastewater epidemiology or adjacent pathogen surveillance methods. Evidence must include treatment of assay sensitivity, sampling representativeness, environmental context and analytical uncertainty. Candidates should be able to explain why a rising signal may not establish population incidence and when further validation is necessary.
• Bring funded-research prioritisation experience, including recurrent laboratory costs and the distinction between grant-funded discovery and sustainable surveillance. Describe how you compared competing proposals, made a limitation visible and preserved scientific integrity under pressure for a persuasive impact narrative. AI knowledge should support critical evaluation, not become an unsupported claim of model-development expertise.
• Prove independence in scientific advice through a real authorship, funding, supplier or dataset conflict that you handled. State current collaborations and commitments relevant to the portfolio, and explain how you sustained timely review without taking over investigators' responsibilities. Clinical claims and public-health intervention authority remain outside this role.

Application

Applications for this mandate are received in one way only: through the India Board Terminal's application process. It is automated end to end. Your Executive Passport travels to the mandate holder in its confidential form, your answers to the three questions below are read before anything else in your file, and every stage that follows is recorded on your applications page.

There is no address to write to and no intermediary to call. The mandate holder reads what the Terminal delivers and nothing else, which is what keeps the process the same for every applicant and keeps your name out of it until you release it. Applications close on 14 October 2026. Mandate reference PCT-ADV-2026-IND-43.