EUCAST Steering Committee

In 2001 Professor Gunnar Kahlmeter was tasked to restructure EUCAST, and became the chair of the organization between 2002-2012, followed by a period first as clinical data co-ordinator and then as technical data co-ordinator until the end of 2025. He was also the founder of the EUCAST Development Lab and served as its director until 2024. Professor Kahlmeter also developed the EUCAST website into an internationally esteemed library on everything related to antimicrobial susceptibility testing. He served as its webmaster until 2025. 

Professor Kahlmeter has played a pivotal role in international antimicrobial susceptibility testing and clinical breakpoint setting over a period of a quarter of a century, and he served in similar roles both for the Swedish Reference Group for Antibiotics and the British Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy. He is known internationally for introducing concepts such as epidemiological cut-off values, devising the EUCAST public consultation process, revising the EUCAST definition of the I-category, introducing the concept of the area of technical uncertainty (ATU), and for developing rapid 4 – 6 hour phenotypic susceptibility testing directly from positive blood culture bottles. Starting from 2026, he has stepped down from his duties as technical data co-ordinator in the EUCAST Steering Committee but will continue to contribute to the subcommittee for determining wild type MIC distributions and the setting of epidemiological cut-off values and to be part of the antimycobacterial subcommittee. We thank him wholeheartedly for his efforts for EUCAST for over a quarter of a century.

Christian joined the EUCAST Steering Committee in 2008 as a representative of the Swedish Reference Group for Antibiotics, however prior to this he was already a regular contributor to EUCAST. He served as Chair of EUCAST between 2016 – 2024 and Immediate past chair from 2024 - 2026. During this time, he led many initiatives including modification of the Susceptible (S)/Susceptible, increased exposure (I)/Resistant (R) definitions, publication of the EUCAST guidelines for detection of resistance mechanisms, introduction of bracketed breakpoints to deal with the situation where the antimicrobial is insufficient for use in monotherapy and latterly introduction of digital EUCAST meetings during the COVID pandemic. He played an active role in the Anti-Mycobacteria Susceptibility Testing, the Anti-Fungal Susceptibility Testing, the Phage Susceptibility Testing and the Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) and Phenotypic Susceptibility Testing subcommittees. 

Christian has been a regular face at EUCAST workshops and educational events throughout the years and is an excellent communicator of the more difficult decisions taken by EUCAST. He has also been the driving force within NordicAST, a joint susceptibility testing group for Nordic countries. He was also EUCAST observer in the EARS-Net DNCC (Disease Network Coordination Committee) for many years. Christian has authored multiple papers on behalf of EUCAST, explaining and defending EUCAST strategy on determination of clinical breakpoints but also on the role of future technologies to detect antibiotic resistance and in 2017 the first publication of guidance for WGS-based antimicrobial susceptibility prediction. 

We thank Christian for his outstanding contributions to EUCAST over the years and his tireless devotion to the scientific endeavour, his efforts will be missed. We are sure that his future at ECDC will be fruitful and hope for his continued communication with EUCAST.