Selay Demirci Dos Santos Duarte is a clinical microbiologist in her last year of residency in Turkey. She also is the official social media executive for the Twitter accounts of Turkish Society of Microbiology and SCARE (study group for carbapenem resistance), and official social media member for ECCMID 2018 and 2019. Selay: “I am very interested in contributing the science all around the world. I believe that storytelling is one of the most important approaches to disseminate science. I believe in a world of unbalance, every scientist should reach the lastest articles, conferences etcetera. That is why I use social media.”

Selay’s ambition does not stop at the world of academia; she believes storytelling can help fight antimicrobial resistence as well as counter antivax movements: “My future dream is to make a bridge between society and microbiologists to apply social innovation for science and intervent to society with the only scientific truths.”

This is one of the entries of the microbiology community’s storytelling contest ‘Building Impact Brick by Brick’. Microbiologists can create a positive impact on society – and it’s as simple as building with Lego©: brick by brick. A march for science that changes a country’s conditions for scientists, a local event that helps parents avoid misuse of antibiotics, a citizen science project providing insights you would never see from a clinical setting. Each initiative, each story, each brick helps create awareness, influence policy and develop the conditions to develop and promote our microbiological knowledge, now and for future generations.