The National Biofilms Innovation Centre (NBIC) are thrilled to announce that the first ever awareness week dedicated to celebrating all things biofilm will take place from 16-22 August 2021.

Microbes live as members of communities, and these are called biofilms. They can have an enormous impact on human life and the health of the planet. NBIC's market analysis shows their total global economic significance to be $4 trillion. #BiofilmWeek aims to promote the economic and physical impact that biofilms have on our world, as well as highlight research taking place to prevent, detect, manage and engineer biofilms.

NBIC are calling on biofilm scientists in both academia and industry to use this awareness week as a platform to showcase their research and technologies across social media; whether it be through written or video blogs, educational activities, or sharing images related to their work and applications in use. NBIC’s #BiofilmWeek webpage includes branded social media templates and a set of talking points to help the biofilm community produce their own content to post throughout the week. The webpage also includes educational resources and activities, and a variety of downloadable branded assets for use across all social media channels.

Throughout #BiofilmWeek NBIC will be highlighting interesting and exciting research taking place across their research institutions and announce the winners of their recent national biofilm photography competitions.

Two NBIC funded projects with the Quadram Institute Bioscience will be launched during the awareness week; a ‘Micro Battle’ card game, to communicate the importance of bacterial diversity within biofilms, and the ‘Biofilm Brainhub’ knowledge website, built with the support of the wider research community, which aims to be the go-to-place for anyone looking to learn about biofilms.

Dr Rebecca Thompson, Impact Manager at the Quadram Institute Bioscience.

“Collaborating and sharing knowledge is key to creating impact. There is a wealth of knowledge spread across the NBIC member organisations, and beyond that we hope to make accessible to the public through the new Biofilm Brainhub website”.

NBIC will also launch their Open Innovation partnering platform, hosted by Innoget, which will give industry and academic partners exclusive access to directly post technology calls and offers and generate connections and collaboration opportunities online. Partners will also have an option to access to Innoget’s Open Science and Innovation network of over a hundred thousand experts to further explore collaborations outside of NBIC’s partner consortium.

Dr Mark Richardson, CEO at NBIC said,

“The purpose of #BiofilmWeek is to highlight the impact biofilms can have on our daily life and show where we need to intervene to control them or harness them to our benefit. We are therefore excited to be launching our new collaboration platform, to allow innovators and problem owners in the biofilm field to easily connect and collaborate to catalyse translation”.

This awareness week is part of NBIC’s wider #BiofilmAware campaign, which is all about helping people to understand what biofilms are and why biofilms are so important.

If you’re an academic in a research institution or a commercial organisation with a desire to join our mission to achieve breakthroughs in biofilm innovation, please contact us at nbic@biofilms.ac.uk.