Laura Plant, PhD, is the Head of External Affairs at the European Research Office of the International Vaccine Institute (IVI). She has a PhD from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia and a research background in bacterial pathogenesis and immunity. She is an international research funding and policy expert and has held positions as a Grants Specialist the Karolinska Institute and as a Senior Research Officer at the Swedish Research Council. She represented Sweden in the Horizon Europe framework programme as the National Contact Point for Health and Expert in the ERA and Widening and led the Swedish National Programme on AMR. She has also represented Sweden as delegate in the Global AMR R&D Hub. She has led the Joint Programming Initiative on Antimicrobial Resistance scientific portfolio, and managed and coordinated the AMR research funding and policy support projects from the European Commission.