How UM students aim to stop cholera outbreaks without any antibiotics 

At the 2025 Science 3K Pitch Competition, Rana Ahmed presented the ground-breaking idea. She introduced combating cholera outbreaks in underrepresented nations by engineering probiotics. Being a waterborne disease, cholera can easily be transmitted. This is common, especially in places that suffer from crises, war and disasters. The current solution is through antibiotics. It is expensive, requires a doctor’s prescription and affects the immune system negatively. 

From left to right, Andrea Ladouceur, Rana Ahmed, Paula Pineda Sanchez, Ghosoun Alomari

Ahmed is part of a team of three, with two other members being Ghosoun Alomari and Paula Pineda Sanchez. Alomari and Sanchez are two undergraduate students in the Faculty of Science. When Ahmed pitched their idea, she was competing against seven more teams. All of which had innovative ideas to tackle real-world problems and positively impact communities.

Selecting the winner was not an easy task for the judges. All the teams had brilliant ideas and worked relentlessly on their pitch. However, one could see how everyone was moved by Ahmed’s pitch. At the end, “A Smarter Way to Stop Cholera Outbreaks – No Antibiotics Needed” won first place. 

“We were over the moon… I didn’t expect that because all the finalists were excellent”, said Ahmed in her interview with the Faculty of Science. She mentioned their team has heard from the Bioscience Association of Manitoba to see how they can advance the project. For the future, Ahmed and her team would like to apply to the Lab2Market program at UM. They hope to get funds, proceed with the idea, and see it come to fruition in real-world applications.

To learn more about the project, watch the full interview on the Faculty of Science’s YouTube channel. 

Kimia Shadkami