• IBBIS's new release of its free, open-source DNA synthesis screening tool, now 100x smaller and screening 1,000 sequences in under 15 minutes;

• SecureBio AI's pre-release assessment of GPT-5.6 and independent review of Anthropic's chemical and biological risk report;

• A new joint publication from RAND, CEPI, and the Brown University Pandemic Center that details accelerating defense and health capabilities for medical countermeasure readiness;

• Several job and fellowship opportunities with upcoming deadlines — see the opportunities section for details;

• And more!

The most recent updates from CLTR, Coefficient Giving, Global Health Security Network, Mirror Biology Dialogues Fund, CSR, Blueprint Biosecurity, FAI, and Sentinel Bio can be found in our July issue.

Pandemic Center, Brown University

The Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health (tracking report newsletter) works to reduce vulnerabilities and increase resilience to pandemics, other biological emergencies, and the harms they pose to health, peace, security, and prosperity.

• Impact Report 2025-2026: Amid growing biosecurity threats and underfunded research, the Pandemic Center delivers the data, policy, and leadership needed to safeguard global health security. Read our newest Impact Report to learn more.

• AHS Index: Co-led by NTI, the Pandemic Center, Economist Enterprise, and the Science for Africa Foundation, the Africa Health Security Index tracks preparedness. Africa is nearly 30% more prepared than five years ago, but critical gaps remain.

• 100 Days Mission Publication: A new joint publication with RAND and CEPI details accelerating defense and health capabilities for medical countermeasure readiness.

• Wastewater Surveillance: Our animated short explains how wastewater monitoring works and the risks if funding is cut. Our recent report highlights new use cases and challenges for tracking pathogens with this tool.

IBBIS

The International Biosecurity and Biosafety Initiative for Science (IBBIS) (newsletter) is a Geneva-based nonprofit that works collaboratively with global partners to strengthen biosecurity norms and develop innovative tools to uphold them.

• New Commec release: IBBIS’ free, open-source DNA screening tool has a major new release. Its reference database is ~100x smaller and 1,000 sequences screen in under 15 minutes on a laptop. Check it out and book a demo.

• New IBBIS publications: IBBIS colleagues (co)-authored five papers in Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology. Topics include: 1) test screening tools against AI-redesigned sequences, 2) report first SBRC results on defining sequences of concern, 3) set out customer screening implementation, 4) argue function-based screening is within reach, and 5) policy pathways for strengthening global biosecurity governance.

• New SBRC technical fellows: With support from Sentinel Bio, IBBIS welcomes Ivet A. Yordanova, a BSL-4-trained viral immunologist, and Chris Chung, a structural biologist newly out of Oxford, as technical fellows to the Sequence Biosecurity Risk Consortium. The SBRC, co-led by Rassin Lababidi, now convenes ~80 experts across 30+ organizations.

• August Newsletter: See here for recent updates.

Active Site

Active Site studies frontier AI in synthetic biology.

• We completed an initial study on DNA synthesis governance.

• We’ve opened an additional lab in Somerville to run two concurrent RCTs this fall, extending our work on novice uplift and DNA synthesis governance.

• Grace Luetmer joined as Chief of Staff!

Asia Centre for Health Security

The Asia Centre for Health Security (ACHS) (news) is an academic think tank set up to strengthen Asia’s readiness for biological threats through scientific evidence, building of expertise and capabilities, and the forging of strategic partnerships. Our vision is a united and resilient Asia safeguarded against health security threats for the well-being of future generations.

In July 2026, ACHS welcomed Dr Claire Standley, Senior Biosecurity Initiatives Lead from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), as speaker at the 7th iteration of the ACHS Webinar Series. In her presentation, entitled “CEPI 3.0: Renewed Strategies for the 100 Days Mission”, Dr Standley spoke about CEPI’s role in the epidemic and pandemic preparedness ecosystem, the importance of collaborations in achieving their goals, and the trajectory from CEPI 1.0 to CEPI 3.0. A recording of the webinar is available here, and you can watch recordings of previous ACHS webinars here.

SecureBio

SecureBio (newsletter) is a nonprofit research organization working on new technologies and policy proposals to delay, detect, and defend against catastrophic pandemics.

SecureBio Detection

• CASPER, our metagenomic wastewater monitoring network, is now up to 49 sites representing 24 cities. We continue to add new sites; if you are interested in sharing samples, please reach out to casper-inquiries@securebio.org.

• The Detection team recently published a blogpost highlighting the most interesting detections to come out of CASPER, including vaccine candidates and other harmless remnants of biology lab research. Zephyr, our nasal swab sampling program, has also continued through the spring and summer, with approximately 30,000 samples collected since March, and the team is now expanding to Miami.

• The OpenAI Foundation has granted SecureBio Detection $17.2M to reduce our end-to-end turnaround time from sample collection to results from 14 days to 3 days, expand our collection footprint, and further validate our detection system. More detail on the team’s progress can be found in the August 2026 update.

SecureBio AI

• The team has continued to assess frontier model capabilities and biosecurity-relevant risks. The team conducted a pre-release assessment of OpenAI’s GPT-5.6, performed an independent review of Anthropic’s chemical and biological risk report, and analyzed the biology-relevant capabilities of the recently released Kimi K3, finding that open-weights models are about 8 months behind the frontier in terms of bio-capabilities.

• Members of the AI team participated in the Biological Weapons Convention working group in Geneva at the end of August.

SecureDNA

SecureDNA offers free, ultra-fast, and privacy-preserving DNA synthesis screening to detect regulated, controlled, or hazardous sequences; it is the only system that also screens millions of predicted functional variants to prevent evasion.

• A search for a Managing Director to lead organizational growth and drive global adoption of DNA synthesis screening is now in its final stages. The role spans strategy, operations, external partnerships, and organizational messaging, and although the process is well advanced, candidates with experience at the intersection of biosecurity policy, science, and nonprofit leadership are still encouraged to apply.

• Kate Daw has joined the team to focus on outreach and onboarding, working directly with synthesis providers and researchers to help them adopt and integrate the screening system.

• Alongside these additions to the team, engagement with providers, researchers, policymakers, and other industry stakeholders continues to support the practical adoption of DNA synthesis screening globally.

Opportunities

Jobs

You can find additional opportunities in the Biosecurity and Pandemic Preparedness section of the 80,000 Hours job board.

• Sentinel Bio: Applications open soon for Sentinel Bio's AI and Biosecurity Program Officer / Senior Program Officer, who will work closely with Program Director Toby Webster.

• Active Site is hiring lab operations associates to help run more uplift studies.

• Radical Numerics is conducting a hiring surge, including for their biodefense team.

• SecureBio:

  • Senior Software Engineer, AI Benchmarking.

  • Their detection team is hiring across several roles.

  • Their AI team will hire for several roles over the coming months across research, engineering, wet lab, red-teaming, comms, and operations. If you’re experienced in any of these areas, please fill out this expression of interest form.

Fellowships

• Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity (ELBI) Fellowship: A part-time, one-year fellowship from Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. We (Anemone and Tessa) are alumni, and recommend applying if you’re doing full-time biosecurity work!

• Transfyr AI Fellowship: A 1-year research fellowship for exceptional graduate students to lead a project solving frontier machine learning problems that impact real-world scientific systems.

• Cambridge Boston Alignment Initiative Fall Research Fellowship in AIxBiosecurity: A fully funded research program hosted in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Apply by September 6th, 11:59 PM EDT.

Events

• The International Bio-Responsibility Conference 2027 will be held on February 3–5, 2027. This conference, organised by the Bio-Responsibility Initiative at the Indian Institute of Science Centre for Society and Policy aims to strengthen safe, secure and responsible life science research and innovation, with a particular focus on the Global South. Learn more and register here.

• Join the International WELL Building Institute for a discussion on Indoor Air as a global public health priority.

• The Boston Globe is hosting its third annual Future of Medicine Summit, an in-person event at the forefront of medical innovation, which will include many biosecurity and public health experts. Registration here.

• Join the Global Health Institute on Tuesday, September 29, 2026, 9am CDT, for a Webinar on Trust, Information, and Outbreak Response: Lessons from Ebola.

• Join this upcoming Bio-Responsibility Policy Lecture titled ‘From Lab Safety to Bio-Responsibility: Building the Human Infrastructure for Safe and Secure Science’ to be delivered by Dr. Antony Schwartz, Duke University, online on 24 September.

Other

• Always wanted to direct your own biosecurity programme? Two exciting opportunities:

  • Renaissance Philanthropy’s Big if True Science Accelerator (BiTS) Biosecurity Cohort is accepting applications until September 20. A part-time program to “design and implement ambitious programs to dramatically reduce the risks from engineered pandemics”.

  • ARIA Programme Director early bird applications close September 7 (final deadline September 28). One existing biosecurity ARIA program is Brian Wang’s Sustained Viral Resilience.

• OpenAI is evolving its GPT-5.5 Bio Bug Bounty into an ongoing private program, the OpenAI Bio Bounty Program, focused on universal jailbreaks that defeat its predefined biosafety challenge for frontier models. The reward for a successful universal jailbreak has doubled, from $25,000 to $50,000, for both GPT-5.6 and GPT-5.5, with smaller awards possible for partial wins. Learn more and submit your application here.

Do you have any opportunities (jobs, events, etc.) you would like to share with our network? Please email Anemone at anemofranz@gmail.com to submit them for our next issue (October 21).

• What the UN, WHO, and UK government are saying about mirror life governance;

• 88 countries convene in Kuala Lumpur for GHS2026 amid a growing Bundibugyo virus outbreak;

• Blueprint Biosecurity launches its first RFP on pathogen-agnostic biothreat detection, plus new jobs and fellowship deadlines across the field;

• And more!

The most recent updates from Active Site, Asia Center for Health Security, IBBIS, and SecureBio can be found in our June issue.

Subscribe now

Centre for Long-Term Resilience (CLTR)

The Biosecurity Policy Unit at the Centre for Long-Term Resilience works closely with the UK Government and other stakeholders to reduce extreme biological risks.

• We published two peer-reviewed papers in Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology: an original research article on AI-assisted customer verification for synthetic nucleic acid screening, and a perspective piece setting out a programme for the advanced detection of AI-enabled pathogenic threats and the gaps in current nucleic acid screening.

• Our Director of Biosecurity Policy, Cassidy Nelson, was appointed to the European Commission’s Scientific Panel of Independent Experts under the EU AI Act.

• We continued to raise the profile of AI-bio considerations in public, including commentary in The Economist on AI-enabled bioterrorism, a talk at EA Global London on AIxBio policy gaps, and a This Is Not A Drill podcast appearance.

• We expanded our Biosecurity Policy Unit with three new senior hires: Scott Allen as Associate Director, Dr Carl Mayers OBE as Senior Adviser, and Dr Michael Mahar as Senior Policy Manager.

Coefficient Giving, Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness Team

Coefficient Giving’s Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness team strives to prevent catastrophic biological risks through supporting efforts to safeguard dual-use technologies, detect and block the transmission of pandemic pathogens, and build the field’s capacity to solve these hard problems.

• Welcomed two new team members to advance our grantmaking: Senior Program Associate Eva Siegmann and (returning!) Senior Program Associate Adin Richards

• Published posts on the Defenses in Depth blog, including:

  • Andrew Snyder-Beattie on how he thinks about catastrophic biological risk (part I, part II)

  • Chris Bakerlee on 10 big projects for reducing bio x-risk

  • Adin Richards on PPE, bioshelters, and environment-to-human threats

  • Damon Binder on several topics, including vacuum decay and the prospects of an AI industrial explosion

• Recommended several grants across our portfolio, including:

  • Pivotal Research, for their Frontier Biodefense Fellowship

  • ProEquip, for general support

  • Renaissance Philanthropy, for a biosecurity accelerator

  • Blueprint Biosecurity, for grantmaking

  • Various grants supporting research on indoor biohardening against airborne pathogens, including those listed here

Global Health Security Network (GHSN)

The Global Health Security Network brings together policymakers, technical experts, and regional partners to strengthen global preparedness through cross-border collaboration, evidence-based policy, and coordinated detection and response to biological threats.

• The fourth Global Health Security Conference (GHS2026) convened in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, from 9–12 June 2026, arriving at a critical inflection point for international cooperation on health security amid a growing Bundibugyo virus disease (BVD) outbreak, mounting geopolitical pressure on multilateral institutions, and significant strain on pandemic preparedness financing.

• The conference brought together delegates from 88 countries and territories across 124 panels, 26 skills training workshops, and 11 plenary sessions spanning biosurveillance, PPE resilience, outbreak governance, deliberate biothreats, and the disruptive potential of AI and biotechnology, including emerging governance questions around mirror biology and AIxBio. GHS2026 also reaffirmed its commitment to equitable representation: 54% of delegates and 55% of speakers were women, and was fully carbon neutral.

Mirror Biology Dialogues Fund (MBDF)

The Mirror Biology Dialogues Fund (newsletter) supports efforts to understand risks and develop governance frameworks for mirror biology research before it becomes technically feasible to create mirror life.

• Since January, MBDF has supported discussions at the American Association of Immunologists meeting, the National Ethics Councils Forum, and GHS 2026. In coming months we will support or co-organize meetings with Africa’s national science academies, the National University of Singapore, and the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense. Selected other milestones are listed below.

• The UN SG’s Scientific Advisory Board and World Health Organization issued brief explainer articles on the risks of mirror life and the need for governance.

• The Nuclear Threat Initiative and the China Arms Control and Disarmament Association issued a Joint Statement calling on the international community to “develop national and international frameworks to guard against the risks posed by mirror life, reaffirming the shared view that such organisms should never be created”.

• The UK government’s new Biological Security Strategy Implementation Report includes commitments to work towards identifying and mitigating the risks of mirror life, including through international discussions.

Council on Strategic Risks (CSR)

The Council on Strategic Risks is a nonprofit, non-partisan security policy institute devoted to anticipating, analyzing and addressing core systemic risks to security in the 21st century, with special examination of the ways in which these risks intersect and exacerbate one another.

• Co-hosted the Global Biosecurity Accelerator’s most recent Biosecurity Dialogue in Warsaw, June 17-18, with Poland’s Ministry of National Defense. Experts and government officials engaged on ways to strengthen biodefense by leveraging public-private partnerships, better preparing for hybrid threats, examining the role of resilience in deterrence, and assessing the risks and opportunities associated with AIxBio.

• Conducted an AI-Enabled Bio-Threat interactive scenario discussion for the Congressional Staff Association on May 21.

• Kyle Wilgus shared CSR’s initial reflections on Biodefense in the FY27 Presidential Budget Request.

• Crystal Grant provided recommendations to the US FTC on revising antitrust policy to enable AI companies to address bio risks.

• CSR shed light on the seminal role of data in biotech and biosecurity in a report released June 26 by Crystal Grant, Harshini Mukundan, and Christine Parthemore.

• CSR also added France, Latvia, and NATO to our Global Biosecurity Tracker, highlighting how nations & organizations are advancing biosecurity.

Blueprint Biosecurity

Blueprint Biosecurity is a nonprofit dedicated to achieving breakthroughs in humanity’s ability to prevent, mitigate, and suppress pandemics.

• Launched Blueprint’s first request for proposals focused on pathogen-agnostic biothreat detection, with a specific focus on computational detection approaches, sample processing methods, and modeling.

• Participated in the “Building Jurisdictional Stockpile Readiness” workshop, contributing to discussions on strengthening stockpiling capabilities.

• Presented at Indoor Air 2026, the 2nd Aerosols and Microbiology Conference and the Canadian Aerosol Conference to drive broader awareness around our work in glycol vapors and far-UVC.

• Attended the Center for Cross-Sector Coordination’s inaugural symposium as a founding sponsor and member, bringing an emergency preparedness perspective to the broader conversation about supporting workforce health and resilience across critical infrastructure.

Sentinel Bio

Sentinel Bio is a non-profit philanthropic fund focused on eliminating pandemic risks.

Team:

• We’re excited to welcome Emily Ge as Chief of Staff, Gianluca Bangara as Operations Lead, and Zhilin Xiao as Senior Strategy Advisor for Asia.

General:

• Claire and Joshua signed an open letter with Sam Altman and Dario Amodei urging mandatory DNA synthesis screening.

• Janika and Joshua published a field guide to DNA security with IFP.

• Joshua wrote “Owning the problem” on why focus beats breadth in philanthropy.

• Claire discussed dual-use synthetic biology on Cogs of War.

• Janika gave expert input at the German Bundestag on mitigating biosecurity risks.

We supported the following organizations across AIxBio and nucleic acid governance:

• Johns Hopkins CHS, RAND, and NTI on AI-biosecurity policy.

• Fourth Eon Bio to build function-based screening tools.

• EBRC and IBBIS to build an auditable KYC standard for synthesis providers.

• We incubated BioTrust to build KYC infrastructure for AI model providers.

Foundation for American Innovation (FAI)

FAI champions the technology, talent, and ideas essential to American prosperity, security, and flourishing; its Science & Innovation team works to modernize the institutions, incentives, and regulations governing American research and aims to pair biotechnology R&D with biosecurity policies ensuring that oversight is harmonized and responsive to emerging biotechnologies.

• FAI Senior Fellows Josh Wentzel and Dean Ball, with President Zach Graves, coorganized an open letter, signed by major AI lab CEOs, national security experts, and synthetic nucleic acid providers, in support of mandatory nucleic acid synthesis screening, including recordkeeping, calling for Congress to act this session. Josh was quoted in Fortune calling the push “bipartisan, concrete, achievable, and noncontroversial”. The letter received write-ups in The Wall Street Journal, Wired, The Verge, Vox, and elsewhere.

• FAI provided input for and endorsed the Engineering Biology Readiness Act and the Web of Biological Data Act.

• In collaboration with 1DaySooner, FAI hosted a June symposium for Clinical Trial Abundance, focused on reforming the clinical trial ecosystem.

• FAI’s The Frontier podcast hosted Coefficient Giving’s biosecurity lead Andrew Snyder-Beattie, Global Health Investment Corporation alum Charlie Petty, and FAI Senior Fellow Josh Wentzel to take the temperature of the biosecurity field.

Opportunities

Jobs

You can see many additional opportunities in the Biosecurity and Pandemic Preparedness section of the 80,000 Hours job board.

• CLTR is building a pool of skilled contractors across our biosecurity and AI work, spanning areas such as biosurveillance and metagenomic detection, crisis-exercise design, PPE/CBRN and supply-chain resilience, and biological arms control. Expressions of interest are welcome on a rolling basis via our open call.

• MBDF is hiring for an Operations Coordinator and an Executive Director’s Associate — learn more at mbdf.org/jobs.

• NTI is looking for an Executive Assistant to the CEO.

• The Simon Institute for Longterm Governance is hiring an AI x Biosecurity Specialist.

• BioTrust, a new startup working on trusted-access for frontier AI labs, is hiring for engineers and a credentialling lead.

• Sentinel Bio is hiring a COO and Senior Program Officer for Biosecurity Chokepoints.

• Google DeepMind is hiring a Threat Modeler Lead, CBRN.

• FAI is looking for a Research Fellow in Clinical Trial Policy, and is always searching for talented people.

• Biohub (maintainer of ESMC and ESMFold2) is looking for a Staff Research Scientist, AI Safety.

• Intercept, a new $500M fund looking to end respiratory infections, has open roles for a Science Lead and Strategy & Ops.

• Blueprint Biosecurity is looking for Respiratory Protection Program Officers and Researchers for the Built Environment Program.

Fellowships

• Transfyr AI Fellowship: A 1-year research fellowship for exceptional graduate students to lead a project solving frontier machine learning problems that impact real-world scientific systems.

• SPAR Fellowship: apply to be a mentor by July 22 or express interest in being a mentee in the upcoming Fall 2026 cohort.

• CBAI AI x Biosecurity Fellowship: will open applications for the fall cohort later this month.

Fellowships with currently-active cohorts, which you may wish to track for future application rounds, include the Pivotal Frontier Biodefense Fellowship, ERA AI x Biosecurity Fellowship, and MATS Biosecurity.

Other

• Apply by August 3 for the next Bluedot Biosecurity Course cohort.

• There are currently small grants available to support AI x Biosecurity research from Bluedot Impact Rapid Grants and grantmaking.ai.

• Blueprint Biosecurity launched a Request for Proposals (RFP) on pathogen-agnostic biothreat detection. Submit a 2–3-page Expression of Interest here by August 21.

• NAM’s Preparing for a Future of AI-Enabled Biology workshop will bring together experts from public health, medicine, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, biosecurity, government, and industry to explore how AI-enabled biological risks may evolve over the next decade. This hybrid event will take place on August 11-12, 2026. Learn more and register here.

• FAI is working to support the response to New World screwworm, reforms to federal science funding, and clinical trial reform. Please reach out if you’re working in these areas and would like to collaborate.

Do you have any opportunities (jobs, events, etc.) you would like to share with our network? Please email Anemone at anemofranz@gmail.com to submit them for our next issue (September 1).

The work of three of the orgs in this newsletter was featured in the May 13 article AI can design viruses, toxins and other bioweapons. How worried should we be?, which tells you a bit about what they’re working on.

Happy reading,
Tessa and Anemone

Subscribe now

Active Site

Active Site studies frontier AI in synthetic biology.

• Our latest work was featured in The Economist, The New York Times, and Nature.

• We recently welcomed eight new members: Associate Scientists Katrina Tremaglio, Daria Listkova, and Kevin Ng; Lab Operations Manager Daniel Michaels; CBAI Fellows Sumnima Singh and Sara Stadulis; and Interns Amy Li and Michelle Zhang.

• We’re currently running wet-lab studies to inform DNA synthesis governance.

• We have settled into our new 15,000-square-foot lab and office space in Kendall Square.

• Our new website is live.

Asia Centre for Health Security

The Asia Centre for Health Security (ACHS) (news) is an academic think tank set up to strengthen Asia’s readiness for biological threats through scientific evidence, building of expertise and capabilities, and the forging of strategic partnerships. Our vision is a united and resilient Asia safeguarded against health security threats for the well-being of future generations.

• In the May 2026 installment of the ACHS Webinar Series, Adj A/Prof Gladys Tan from DSO National Laboratories Singapore spoke about the steps required to establish the maximum containment (BSL-4) laboratory in Singapore including design considerations, safety and security measures, and the need for a sustainable maintenance programme. A recording of the webinar will be available here in due course. In the meantime, watch recordings of previous ACHS webinars and click here to find out about upcoming webinars.

• ACHS is still accepting registrations of interest for its Biosecurity Simulation Exercise (BSX 2026) taking place on 27-28 August 2026 in Singapore. Do consider joining us if your work in public health, clinical medicine, laboratory sciences, policy, defence, or law enforcement involves laboratory biosafety and biosecurity, or preparedness and response for bioterrorism. More information is available here.

IBBIS

The International Biosecurity and Biosafety Initiative for Science (IBBIS) (news) is a Geneva-based nonprofit that works collaboratively with global partners to strengthen biosecurity norms and develop innovative tools to uphold them.

• ISO Liaison Status IBBIS’ DNA Synthesis Screening Consortium (DSSC) has been granted Category A Liaison status with ISO Technical Committee 276. This will enable a direct participation in technical discussions, access to working documents, expert nominations, and submission of new work proposals. A milestone for multi-stakeholder screening standards!

• Publications

  • Four papers in the Frontiers special issue on synthetic nucleic acid biosecurity, covering global governance asymmetries, defining sequences of concern, EU implementation, and functional screening, with more articles forthcoming.

  • A book chapter on The Biological Weapons Convention in the Age of Synthetic Nucleic Acids.

  • IBBIS’ annual letter is now out and available in the six UN official languages.

• Events

  • IBBIS and SB3 co-hosted a two-day biosecurity workshop in Brasília, convening policymakers and industry to explore DNA synthesis screening and biotechnology governance in the Brazilian and Latin American context.

  • IBBIS will be presenting across six sessions at the Global Health Security Conference, June 9-12. Do reach out if you want to connect!

SecureBio

SecureBio (newsletter) is a nonprofit research organization working on new technologies and policy proposals to delay, detect, and defend against catastrophic pandemics.

Detection

• The team officially renamed from the Nucleic Acid Observatory to SecureBio Detection.

• CASPER now holds the majority of all metagenomic wastewater sequencing data on SRA (1.3 trillion reads). Measles has been detected 21 times; a case study identifying a single infection in a sewershed of 1M+ people was submitted to NEJM Evidence. End-to-end detection time hit a personal best of seven days, with a clear path to three days. We also achieved the first detection of wild-type mumps.

• AI-Assisted Review: Frontier models now handle flagged sequencing reads, reducing human review load by ~80%.

• Lab & Org: Moved into 7,500 sqft of lab space in Kendall Square on April 1st and made five new hires across computational and lab roles.

• Nasal Swabs (Zephyr): Over 16,000 swabs collected this respiratory season, detecting four coronavirus strains and a dozen+ rhinovirus serotypes.

AI

• We released our Biology Benchmarks Dashboard: a resource to track frontier AI models’ biological capabilities. It covers our private evals alongside all relevant public evals, uplift studies, and model cards.

• Predictive Bio-Bench, our Bio R&D benchmark developed for CAISI, is complete: it consists of verifiable super-expert biology tasks that detect super-human model capabilities. This was a collaborative project built on novel, non-public biological data. Work on it continues: if you have access to such data and want to contribute, get in touch!

• We released BioTIER, an expert-developed resource helping AI developers identify and evaluate biological misuse risks in LLMs. The NYT reported on this, and Meta cited it.

• We ran the largest in-silico biosecurity uplift study to date, and a project measuring agents’ use of protein design tools. Both were covered in Nature.

• Our paper on models completing wet-lab tasks was accepted at ICML 2026 in South Korea.

Opportunities

Jobs

• Active Site is hiring for a Chief of Staff.

  • They also anticipate launching several new roles, including a Biological AI Scientist, Policy Lead, AI Evaluation Lead, and Behavioral Scientist. Please email careers at activesite dot org to apply, refer a candidate, or register general interest.

• 1Day Sooner is hiring a Partnership Lead, for their Clinical Trial Abundance program.

• CEPI is seeking a Senior Manager, Defense Partnerships to deepen CEPI’s partnership with security and defense partners in support of CEPI’s Biosecurity Strategy, CEPI 3.0 and the 100 Days Mission. Apply by June 7th.

• Also, keep an eye out on SecureBio’s careers page as they will soon open a number of positions across Detection and AI.

Other

• Apply to participate in Pivotal Research’s Frontier Biodefense Fellowship by June 7th.

  • Spend 9 weeks in London doing high-impact biodefense projects with expert mentorship.

  • Get mentorship from SecureBio, Blueprint Biosecurity, SynX Therapeutics, Coefficient Giving, and many more.

  • Stipend up to £8,000; travel, accommodation, etc. are covered.

• Apply to the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense’s Fall 2026 Young Global Professionals Program: This internship offers hands-on experience and exposure to areas such as program operations, research, critical thinking, communications, event planning, government and congressional education, and stakeholder engagement. Interns will gain insight into assessing biodefense capability gaps, while supporting key priorities and projects. This internship is based in Washington, DC and the deadline to apply is Friday, June 5.

• Apply by June 7th to participate in Bluedot’s Biosecurity Course. Intensive (~6 days at ~5h/day) or part-time (~6 weeks at ~5h/week) options available.

• Apply by June 7 for the new MATS Biosecurity Track, launched “because the threat model has shifted: biological foundation models, LLMs with growing wet-lab uplift, and AI-accelerated design tools are compressing timelines on capabilities the existing biosecurity stack was not built to absorb.”

  • 10-week research fellowship, running from September 28th to December 4th.

Do you have any opportunities (jobs, events, etc.) you would like to share with our network? Please email Anemone at anemofranz@gmail.com to submit them for our next issue.

We regularly solicit updates from a group of organizations that we believe are doing impactful work to reduce GCBRs in order to improve transparency, facilitate collaboration, and otherwise accelerate progress in our community.

Did you find this newsletter helpful? Do you have ideas on how we could improve it? Please fill out this brief feedback form or email hello@tessa.fyi.

Cover image credit: Tametomo banishes the smallpox demon from the Island of Oshima. Color woodcut by Yoshikazu, 1851/1853, Wellcome Collection.

• A major RFP from Coefficient Giving;

• What the WHO and UN Secretary General’s Scientific Advisory Board think about on mirror life;

• Who did Blueprint Biosecurity fund for glycol vapor safety testing?

• An abundance of AI x Biosecurity fellowships

• And more!

The most recent updates from Active Site, Asia Center for Health Security, IBBIS, SecureBio, and Sentinel Bio can be found in our previous issue.

Subscribe now

Mirror Biology Dialogues Fund

The Mirror Biology Dialogues Fund (newsletter) supports efforts to understand risks and develop governance frameworks for mirror biology research before it becomes technically feasible to create mirror life.

• The UN Secretary-General’s Scientific Advisory Board published a brief on mirror life noting “widespread scientific agreement that mirror life should not be made”.

• The World Health Organization published a detailed Q&A on mirror life and related technologies.

• The Nuclear Threat Initiative and the China Arms Control and Disarmament Association issued a joint statement calling on the international community to “Develop national and international frameworks to guard against the risks posed by mirror life.”

• In their 2026 Doomsday Clock Statement, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists urged the international community to take “all feasible steps to prevent the creation of mirror life” through multilateral agreements and national regulations.

Global Health Security Network

The Global Health Security Network brings together policymakers, technical experts, and regional partners to strengthen global preparedness through cross-border collaboration, evidence-based policy, and coordinated detection and response to biological threats.

GHS2026 is just around the corner, and we’re excited to share what’s in store.

This year’s programme features keynote speakers addressing some of the most pressing challenges in global health security- from deliberate biothreats and emerging technologies to governance reform and multisectoral collaboration. Alongside the plenary sessions, GHS2026 will bring together workshops, panels, and side events spanning biosurveillance, outbreak investigation, mis/disinformation, DURC oversight, AIxBio, synthesis screening, medical countermeasures development, and the investigation of deliberate biological events.

GHS2026 is where experts from across sectors, industries, and programmes come together to build the connections and partnerships that strengthen bioresilience globally. Registration is still open - we hope to see you there. https://www.ghsconf.com/welcome-to-ghs-2026/

Coefficient Giving

Coefficient Giving’s Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness team strives to prevent catastrophic biological risks through supporting efforts to safeguard dual-use technologies, detect and block the transmission of pandemic pathogens, and build the field’s capacity to solve these hard problems.

• Changed our name: Open Philanthropy is now Coefficient Giving!

• Welcomed two new team members to advance our grantmaking: Associate Program Officer Fiona Conlon and Senior Program Associate Aman Patel. We also welcomed the return of Senior Program Officer James Wagstaff to the team.

• Recommended substantial grants across our portfolio, including to:

  • Active Site, general support

  • Mirror Biology Dialogues Fund, general support

  • ProEquip, general support

  • Blueprint Biosecurity, for their grantmaking program

  • SecureBio, to expand their team

• Launched a major Request for Proposals, aiming to accelerate our grantmaking further in light of rapid technological progress. Actively soliciting expressions of interest until May 11, 2026, particularly in the areas of transmission suppression, AIxBio, policy/advocacy, and field-building.

Centre for Long-Term Resilience

The Biosecurity Policy Unit at the Centre for Long-Term Resilience (CLTR) works closely with the UK Government and other stakeholders to reduce extreme biological risks.

• In January 2026, we published our Defensive Acceleration report on how the UK can operationalise defensive acceleration for biological defence, detailing four concept notes on priority defensive applications.

• In February 2026, we provided a summary of CLTR recommendations that were included in the EU Biotech Act draft regulation.

• In April 2026, we hosted a closed-door panel event at the London Defence Conference entitled ‘Exploiting AI to defend against Biosecurity Threats’ with UK Government panelists from AISI, MOD, and FCDO for senior Parliamentarians, civil servants, and leaders from industry and the third sector.

• We published two commentary articles: One in TIME on AI CBRNe threats and another in RUSI on Iran biological weapon programme risks.

• Two of our staff commenced UK government secondments in AISI and DSIT working on high-impact biosecurity topics, and we completed a hiring call for three new staff positions.

Council on Strategic Risks

The Council on Strategic Risks (CSR) is a nonprofit, non-partisan security policy institute devoted to anticipating, analyzing and addressing core systemic risks to security in the 21st century, with special examination of the ways in which these risks intersect and exacerbate one another.

• Hosted an event led by CSR’s Ending Bioweapons Fellows, Simon Grimm and Temi Ibitoye, on Scaling Pathogen Agnostic Detection of Biothreats.

• Co-hosted a panel discussion for Congressional staffers with the Engineering Biology Research Consortium on cloud labs producing AI-ready biological data.

• Partnered with the Japan Institute of International Affairs in leading security officials from the Government of Japan through a bioweapons scenario discussion.

• Featured work from CSR Visiting Fellows Brian O’Neil on the benefits of using aptamer technology for pathogen detection and Eva Siegmann on respiratory masks as an immediate defense against biothreats.

• Recommended resource increases to optimize biodefense as part of proposed DoD spending increases.

Blueprint Biosecurity

Blueprint Biosecurity is a nonprofit dedicated to achieving breakthroughs in humanity’s ability to prevent, mitigate, and suppress pandemics.

• Announced the recipients for the GlycolISER program. This initiative supports research evaluating the safety, efficacy, and potential applications of three glycol vapors: propylene glycol, dipropylene glycol, and triethylene glycol.

• Bioresilience Fund: We’re actively expanding the fund this year to accelerate high-impact pandemic preparedness efforts. Explore our funded projects.

• Members of the Blueprint team will be attending the following upcoming conferences:

  • National Air Filtration Association Technical Seminar (Louisville, KY, Apr 8–10)

  • National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) Preparedness Summit (Baltimore, MD, Apr 13–16)

  • Hoover Institution Bio Leadership Summit (Stanford, CA, Apr 14)

Opportunities

• Major request for proposals from the Coefficient Giving (CG) Biosecurity and Pandemic Preparedness team.

  • CG invites ambitious proposals aimed at both preventing and responding to engineered biological threats. Core priority areas include bolstering transmission suppression (e.g., PPE, clean air), safeguarding AI-bio capabilities, advancing policy, and growing the field.

  • Submissions of short expressions of interest will be accepted until May 11 2026 at 11:59pm PT. Anyone is eligible to apply, including those working in academia, nonprofits, industry, or independently. For more information, and to submit an expression of interest, go here.

• Fellowships and Jobs

  • The Council on Strategic Risks has announced a call for the next cohort of Mid-Career Biodefense Bootcamp Fellows, with applications due by April 24.

  • Blueprint Biosecurity will continue to have open roles throughout 2026 and encourage anyone interested to submit an Expression of Interest here.

  • ERA will host a 10-week, fully-funded AIxBiosecurity Fellowship in Cambridge UK from July to September. Applications due by April 27.

  • Cambridge Boston Alignment Initiative (CBAI) will host a full-time, in-person AI x Biosecurity research fellowship from June 8 to August 10. Applications due by May 3.

• Challenges and Hackathons

  • Apart Research AIxBio Hackathon (April 24-26) is a three-day online research hackathon exploring how AI can strengthen biosecurity. Co-organized by Apart Research, BlueDot Impact, and Cambridge Biosecurity Hub, with in-person hubs in San Francisco and Berlin. Four tracks: DNA Screening and Synthesis Controls (Cambridge Boston Alignment Initiative), Benchtop Synthesizer Security (Sentinel Bio), Pandemic Early Warning, and AI Biosecurity Tools. $4,000 in prizes. No prior AI safety experience required.

  • DARPA Bio-attribution Challenge: The deadline to register is June 15. Learn more and register here.

  • The Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) and The Elders are launching a new intergenerational initiative to generate the ideas and leadership needed for a safer future against biological threats.

    • Application deadline: Sunday, May 3, 2026 at 11:59PM ET

    • Application form: https://www.tfaforms.com/5213832

Do you have any opportunities (jobs, events, etc.) you would like to share with our network? Please email Anemone at anemofranz@gmail.com to submit them for our next issue.

We regularly solicit updates from a group of organizations that we believe are doing impactful work to reduce GCBRs in order to improve transparency, facilitate collaboration, and otherwise accelerate progress in our community.

Did you find this newsletter helpful? Do you have ideas on how we could improve it? Please fill out this brief feedback form or email hello@tessa.fyi.

Cover image credit: An operating team, 1951 postcard, US National Library of Medicine.

In this issue:

• A randomized controlled trial on whether LLMs can help novices perform wet lab tasks (spoiler: yes, for some steps, but without much impact on end-to-end success)

• Slides / recordings on the Global Risk Index for AI-Powered Biodesign Tools, Lessons Learned from COVID-19, and standards and regulatory requirements for screening synthetic DNA orders

• and more!

Subscribe now

Active Site

Active Site studies frontier AI in synthetic biology.

We ran the largest and longest in-person randomized controlled trial in AIxBio to answer whether mid-2025 frontier AI models help complete novices perform foundational biology tasks. For more details, read the arXiv preprint, blog post, and forecasting study with FRI.

Asia Centre for Health Security

The Asia Centre for Health Security (ACHS) (news) is an academic think tank set up to strengthen Asia’s readiness for biological threats through scientific evidence, building of expertise and capabilities, and the forging of strategic partnerships. Our vision is a united and resilient Asia safeguarded against health security threats for the well-being of future generations.

• During the recent ACHS Webinar Series, Dr. Sana Zakaria, Senior Research Leader for Emerging Technology, RAND Europe, highlighted the role of artificial intelligence-enabled biological design tools (AI-BDTs) in biomedical research. Her talk, entitled “Global Biorisk Index for AI-Powered Biodesign Tools”, also noted how existing AI governance frameworks are ill-suited to address the unique risk profile of BDTs. Watch the webinar recording here.

• Simon Fraser University (SFU) and ACHS recently co-hosted a public lecture entitled “Managing Borders during Global Public Health Emergencies; Lessons Learned from COVID-19”, featuring Prof Kelley Lee, Canada Research Chair Tier I in Global Health Governance from SFU and the University of British Columbia, Canada, as key speaker. This was followed by a panel discussion on the Southeast Asian experience of border control measures, featuring experts from the region, and moderated by ACHS Director, Prof Hsu Li Yang. Watch the lecture here.

IBBIS

The International Biosecurity and Biosafety Initiative for Science (IBBIS) (news) is a Geneva-based nonprofit that works collaboratively with global partners to strengthen biosecurity norms and develop innovative tools to uphold them.

• First DNA Screening Standards Consortium (DSSC) meeting: The DSSC brings together experts to develop practical implementation guidance of globally relevant screening practices. Its first meeting on 10 February reviewed the draft 2026–2027 Roadmap, shared regional and policy updates, and introduced the draft outline of the ISO 20688-2 Implementation Guide (a priority identified by the EU Commission). For more, contact Sophie Peresson (sophie@ibbis.bio).

• IBBIS participates in an EU Commission Workshop: IBBIS shared perspectives on standards and regulatory requirements for screening synthetic DNA orders, drawing on insights from the Global DNA Synthesis Map to highlight current practices, gaps, and opportunities across the EU. Outcomes will inform the broader impact assessment of the proposed Biotech Act.

• Kirsten Kulcsar Weand joins IBBIS: Before IBBIS, Kirsten served as Director of the Office of the Biological Policy Staff at the U.S. Department of State, and previously on the National Security Council at the White House. Her work will focus on export controls and vulnerability reporting.

SecureBio

SecureBio (newsletter) is a nonprofit research organization working on new technologies and policy proposals to delay, detect, and defend against catastrophic pandemics.

• SecureBio’s Nucleic Acid Observatory (NAO) published a preprint of its findings after conducting untargeted metagenomic sequencing of airplane wastewater for viral surveillance. The team found that across the human-infecting RNA viruses they examined, relative abundances were consistently higher in airplane wastewater than in municipal wastewater, with a median increase of 13x. This suggests that monitoring air travelers for disease is a high-leverage pathogen detection strategy. A blogpost discussing the project can be found here.

• SecureBio’s AI team published a blog reviewing their many achievements in 2025 – a year during which the team tripled its headcount – which describes its work to turn AI-biorisk evaluations from a set of bespoke projects into something closer to an ecosystem capability. We are also pleased to announce that the AI team won a contract to help build and run bio-evals for the European Commission’s AI Office, as part of the EU AI Act. This is the group’s second government engagement in addition to its work building bio-evals for US CAISI.

• The NAO will have multiple hiring opportunities in the coming months for scientists, laboratory automation specialists, and project managers. The AI team is going to expand its strategic operations and will soon open a round for a senior position. Please keep an eye out on the SecureBio careers page or contact info@securebio.org if you have any questions.

Sentinel Bio

Sentinel Bio is a non-profit philanthropic fund focused on eliminating pandemic risks.

AIxBio:

• We’re reviewing our AIxBio strategy, examining assumptions and uncertainties underlying our current and future work.

• Active Site’s major RCT on novice AIxBio uplift, which we supported last year, is now published.

Nucleic acid governance:

• We renewed our support for rani to continue their synthesis screening policy work in Europe. We also supported SecureDNA for a go-to-market plan for DNA synthesis screening tools; Ed You for a playbook on biosecurity law enforcement coordination; and Frontiers Media for open-access articles on synthetic nucleic acids.

• We’re supporting the IGSC in hiring a Program Associate/Manager.

General:

• We published our annual letter and a blog post on why we’re doubling down on synthesis screening after evaluating >200 alternative chokepoints.

Opportunities

Jobs

• Active Site is hiring for a Head of Ops, Lab Ops Manager, Scientist, and Research Associate! https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/activesite

• Sentinel Bio is recruiting a Senior Program Officer for their work in Asia and an Operations Specialist.

• The International Gene Synthesis Consortium (IGSC) is hiring a Program Associate/Manager.

• The SecureBio Ops team is looking for an Office Manager & Operations Coordinator.

• Blueprint Biosecurity is hiring for a Chief of Staff, Recruiting Lead, Operations Associate and Far-UVC Program Officer.

• Lila AI is making the first hires for their Safety Team “to prepare for risks from scientific superintelligence”.

• Amodo Design is hiring for a biosecurity Field Lead to “to own and drive our biosecurity engineering workstream”.

Other

• Apply by March 5 for the 2026 Youth for Biosecurity Fellowship, run by the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA).

• The next rounds of the Biosecurity Course from BlueDot Impact being in mid-March; apply by March 8!

• Encode AI is co-sponsoring Assembly Bill 1864 in California and supporting Sen. Cotton and Sen. Klobuchar's Biosecurity Modernization and Innovation Act in Congress to require gene synthesis screening. If you are interested in publicly (e.g., testifying at a hearing) or privately (e.g., meeting with staff) supporting either effort, please reach out to ben@encodeai.org.

• The Institute for Progress has an open Request for Proposals to the Launch Sequence, looking for pitches related to accelerating science, strengthening security, and adapting institutions.

• The ICGEB Fellowships for Scientists in Biosecurity offers early-career scientists from OECD/DAC countries a fellowship at ICGEB laboratories in Italy, India, South Africa and at the ICGEB Regional Research Centre in China, apply by March 31!

Do you have any opportunities (jobs, events, etc.) you would like to share with our network? Please email Anemone at anemofranz@gmail.com to submit them.

We regularly solicit updates from a group of organizations that we believe are doing impactful work to reduce GCBRs in order to improve transparency, facilitate collaboration, and otherwise accelerate progress in our community.

Did you find this newsletter helpful? Do you have ideas on how we could improve it? Please fill out this brief feedback form or email hello@tessa.fyi.

Cover image credit: Drawing of the 1918 Influenza. Wellcome Collection. Source: Wellcome Collection.

— Anemone and Tessa

Subscribe now

Mirror Biology Dialogues Fund

The Mirror Biology Dialogues Fund (newsletter) supports efforts to understand risks and develop governance frameworks for mirror biology research before it becomes technically feasible to create mirror life.

• UNESCO’s International Bioethics Committee recommended a precautionary global moratorium on the creation of mirror organisms, and the UN Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters stated that mirror organisms present “unprecedented, perhaps existential, risks” in its 2025 report to the UN Secretary-General.

• Germany’s Central Commission for Biological Safety (ZKBS) issued a statement that mirror bacteria could pose serious risks and that “a broad scientific and societal debate” was necessary.

• The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and Renaissance Philanthropy have stated that they will not fund research with the goal of creating mirror organisms.

• In September, MBDF co-hosted a technical workshop with Professor Patrick Cai at the University of Manchester, convening over 30 synthetic biologists, mirror biochemists, ethicists, and governance experts. Attendees discussed precursor technologies for mirror life that could potentially be governed to prevent its creation while preserving beneficial research.

Council on Strategic Risks

The Council on Strategic Risks (CSR) is a nonprofit, non-partisan security policy institute devoted to anticipating, analyzing, and addressing core systemic risks to security in the 21st century, with special examination of the ways in which these risks intersect and exacerbate one another.

• CSR launched its Global Biosecurity Tracker in December, documenting how countries are working to mitigate biological risks. The launch captures efforts by Canada, Finland, Germany, Japan, Norway, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the United States, plus the European Union. CSR will add additional countries quarterly.

• Highlighting US government biodefense efforts, explore our FY26 update to the Biodefense Budget Breakdown and analysis of biodefense in the Fiscal Year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act.

• CSR’s Christine Parthemore and Andy Weber guest-edited a special “deterrence by denial” edition of the Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament focused on addressing biological weapons threats. CSR co-hosted a side event with Nagasaki University at the Biological Weapons Convention Working Group in December to amplify deterrence by denial.

• CSR is pushing for biodefense to be quantified in NATO’s 3.5% defense capability spending targets. See the recent Parthemore-Weber op-ed and stay tuned for more.

Pandemic Center, Brown University School of Public Health

The Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health works to reduce vulnerabilities and increase resilience to pandemics, other biological emergencies, and the harms they pose to health, peace, security, and prosperity.

• Last quarter, we saw the publication of the HLIP Closing the Deal: Financing Our Security Against Pandemic Threats and public briefing, which highlights ways to secure the world (including manufacturing and distributing vaccines, PPE, tests, and treatments) against major biological threats in an era of diminishing resources. The Pandemic Center’s Senior Advisor, Beth Cameron, operates as a Special Adviser to the HLIP, and Senior Advisor Seth Berkley is an HLIP panel member and spoke at the NAM event. Other Pandemic Center and Brown SPH individuals are associated with the HLIP secretariat and working groups: Sabrina Chwalek, Yuliya Velhan, Gabby Chalker, and Stephanie Psaki.

• Pandemic Center Co-Hosted Gabby Stern, Former WHO Communications Chief, in November for an in-person conversation. Read more about that here.

• Our Clean Indoor Air team convened state leaders, legislators, researchers, and advocates in Providence (Dec. 8) to advance school indoor air quality legislation (H5597 and S0977), and expanded the Global Pledge for Healthy Indoor Air to 240 organizations and launched Montenegro’s national initiative to deploy clean air technologies across all elementary classrooms.

• Senior Advisor Seth Berkley launched his book, Fair Doses, and spoke about it on a webinar with Director Jen Nuzzo.

Asia Centre for Health Security

The Asia Centre for Health Security (ACHS) (newsletter) is a new academic think tank, set up to strengthen Asia’s readiness for biological threats through scientific evidence, building of expertise and capabilities, and the forging of strategic partnerships. Our vision is a united and resilient Asia safeguarded against health security threats for the well-being of future generations.

• The quarterly-held Asia Centre for Health Security (ACHS) Webinar Series discusses innovative developments in health security in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond. The webinars are presented by leaders in the field of biosafety and biosecurity. The next instalment of this Series, “Global Biorisk Index for AI-Powered Biodesign Tools”, will be held on 22 January 2026, Thursday at 5pm (Singapore time, GMT +08:00). It will be presented by Dr Sana Zakaria, Senior Research Leader for Emerging Technology, RAND Europe. Register at https://asia-chs.org/webinar/achs-webinar-series/.

• Simon Fraser University (SFU) and ACHS will be co-hosting a public lecture on 22 January 2026. Titled “Managing Borders during Global Public Health Emergencies; Lessons Learned from COVID-19”, the lecture will be presented by Prof Kelley Lee, Canada Research Chair Tier I in Global Health Governance from SFU and the University of British Columbia, Canada. This will be followed by a panel discussion featuring Prof Kelley and several experts from the region, including Prof Hsu Li Yang, Director, ACHS. Register for the lecture at https://for.sg/achs-pandemicborders.

IBBIS

The International Biosecurity and Biosafety Initiative for Science (IBBIS) (news) is a Geneva-based nonprofit that works collaboratively with global partners to strengthen biosecurity norms and develop innovative tools to uphold them.

• Launch of Global DNA Synthesis Map: The Global DNA Synthesis Map is the first publicly available global overview of DNA synthesis providers, screening practices, and regulatory frameworks. The tool provides visibility over a complex global industry and offers a fully public view of how DNA-writing capabilities are happening worldwide.

• Launch of the DNA Screening Standards Consortium (DSSC): This is a new international, multi-stakeholder initiative focused on strengthening and supporting the implementation of global DNA synthesis screening standards. Building on frameworks such as ISO 20688-2, the DSSC will focus on standards convergence, practical implementation tools, and engagement with policymakers and standards bodies.

• Launch of the Sequence Biosecurity Risk Consortium (SBRC): The SBRC maintains a standard definition of “sequences of concern” based on a scientific assessment of biosecurity risk from synthetic nucleic acids. We provide test sets, a clear risk-based rubric for flagging sequences, and a trusted forum for synthesis providers, screening tool developers, and policymakers to address screening standards and vulnerabilities.

Centre for Long-Term Resilience

The Biosecurity Policy Unit at the Centre for Long-Term Resilience (CLTR) works closely with the UK Government and other stakeholders to reduce extreme biological risks.

• We published a cost-benefit analysis demonstrating that mandating screening for synthetic nucleic acid orders is highly cost-beneficial for the UK. We have recommended that the UK Government propose screening legislation by Q4 2026.

• We consolidated the evidence gaps on mirror life risks outlined in the 2024 technical report and published a preprint and report on novel molecular dynamics simulations, which suggest that existing antibiotics would fail to bind to mirror bacterial targets. These pieces of work reinforced our conclusion that research directly leading to the creation of mirror life should not be conducted, and policy governance decisions do not need to wait.

• We released an independent ‘Two Years On’ assessment of the UK’s Biological Security Strategy. While noting progress in responsible innovation and the Biothreats Radar, we flagged critical delays in the National Biosurveillance Network and recommended an updated outcome-delivery framework to ensure the strategy’s ambitions are fully realised.

NTI | bio

The NTI | bio program works to identify gaps and promote lasting systemic change to improve biotechnology governance, strengthen biosecurity and pandemic preparedness, and reduce global catastrophic biological risks.

• NTI released a new report highlighting key findings and policy recommendations on safeguarding against risks at the convergence of AI and the life sciences. The report was developed from a tabletop exercise that NTI conducted at the Munich Security Conference in February 2025.

• The NTI | bio Next Generation for Biosecurity Competition winners presented their paper, Redefining Biological Weapons: Expanding the BWC to Incorporate Infrastructure Harm and Cyberbiothreats, at a December 2025 BWC Meeting side event. The authors argue that the BWC must evolve to address emerging threats that target not only living organisms, but also critical infrastructure and digital systems.

• NTI introduced a new framework—developed by a group of international experts—to help funders assess research proposals for risks of widespread population harm through accidents or deliberate misuse, determine if the risks outweigh the benefits, and build safety and security into the research that is ultimately funded.

CEPI

CEPI is a global partnership working to accelerate the development of vaccines and other biologic countermeasures against epidemic and pandemic threats.

• The Biosecurity Policy has been finalised and is due to be published during the period 27-29th January on the CEPI website with an accompanying Blog and CEPI central post. We will start a series of explainer presentations and share and trial the Biosecurity review processes with awardees and CEPI staff. We are suggesting an active date for the Policy of 1st July.

Global Health Security Network

The Global Health Security Network brings together policymakers, technical experts, and regional partners to strengthen global preparedness through cross-border collaboration, evidence-based policy, and coordinated detection and response to biological threats.

• GHSN is thrilled to serve as a member of the WHO civil society task force on antimicrobial resistance (AMR). We look forward to providing key insights into the converging risks and growing stressors that influence antimicrobial resistance, challenge drug development pipelines, and global health inequities that fuel transmission.

• The GHS2026 conference is soon approaching in June - we look forward to sharing the results of our Scientific Review Committee’s efforts in abstract review and programme development. The Global Health Security Conference in Kuala Lumpur brings together the world’s leading experts to tackle the most pressing health threats of our time, from outbreak response to biosecurity and resilience. Join us to connect, learn, and help shape the future of global health security!

SecureBio

SecureBio (newsletter) is a nonprofit research organization working on new technologies and policy proposals to delay, detect, and defend against catastrophic pandemics.

• The Nucleic Acid Observatory (NAO) substantially scaled its pathogen-agnostic biosurveillance to 31 wastewater sampling sites across 19 US cities, enabling early detections of measles (Hawaiʻi) and West Nile virus (Missouri). The team published peer-reviewed work in The Lancet Microbe. Zephyr, our pooled individual sampling program, scaled to 100-200 daily swabs in Boston, improved pathogen recovery and resolution, and began laying the groundwork for bacterial sequencing. The Zephyr team’s work was covered in the Boston Globe. We also renewed and expanded our biodefense partnership with PHC under the DIU Anti-Dote program, redesigned our alerting and analysis pipelines, and advanced automation to increase sensitivity while reducing human review bottlenecks.

• The AI-Bio team expanded its portfolio of biosecurity evaluations and mitigation work and delivered or licensed multiple benchmarks, evaluation tools, and newly designed bio-misuse filters to various frontier labs. The team has also started bio-evaluation projects for the European Commission as well as for NIST’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation. Team members advised governments, frontier AI labs, and research organizations and presented their ABLE and ABC papers at NeurIPS. The team’s director was cited in a piece by NBC on AI-bio risks.

Panoplia Laboratories

​Panoplia Laboratories is a nonprofit organization that evaluates the risks and capabilities of AI-driven biology through wet lab research.

• We will release the results of our AI/bio novice uplift study in mid February and plan on repeating the study this summer with new LLMs.

Sentinel Bio

Sentinel Bio is a non-profit philanthropic fund focused on eliminating pandemic risks.

• Team: Dr. Toby Webster joined to lead our AIxBio program.

• AIxBio:

  • We’re supporting Epoch AI to expand their database tracking biological AI models, their technical specifications, and safeguards, building on our 2024 collaboration

  • We supported RAND, who are researching early warning systems for dangerous capabilities in frontier AI-enabled biological design tools

• Nucleic acid synthesis security:

  • We’re wrapping up a project with the MITRE Corporation on mechanisms for aggregating data across the DNA synthesis industry, aiming to address the “split-order problem,” where bad actors might order fragments short enough to fall below screening thresholds.

  • We are preparing to launch a wet-lab study to assess the difficulty of assembling DNA fragments at different lengths.

• Other biotechnology security chokepoints:

  • We wrapped up our investigation into other physical access controls for biosecurity and hope to publish our findings soon.

SecureDNA

SecureDNA offers free, ultra-fast, and privacy-preserving DNA synthesis screening to detect regulated, controlled, or hazardous sequences; it is the only system that also screens millions of predicted functional variants to prevent evasion.

• Over the past months, SecureDNA continued to engage with the global biosecurity and synthetic biology communities through a series of technical and policy-focused forums. In October, we participated in the iGEM Grand Jamboree in Paris, meeting with student teams, academic mentors, and organizers to discuss practical approaches to sequence screening and emerging risks in distributed synthesis.

• In November, SecureDNA contributed to expert discussions at Engineering Biology Research Consortium meetings in Singapore, focusing on implementation realities for robust nucleic acid screening across diverse regulatory and infrastructure environments. We also participated in SynbiTECH in London, where conversations increasingly focused on the emerging challenges posed by AI-assistance and nontraditional synthesis pathways.

• Alongside these engagements, SecureDNA continues to work with providers, researchers, policymakers, and other industry stakeholders to support practical adoption of DNA synthesis screening.

Blueprint Biosecurity

Blueprint Biosecurity is a nonprofit dedicated to achieving breakthroughs in humanity’s ability to prevent, mitigate, and suppress pandemics.

• Received initial high-level insights from studies funded earlier in 2025. You can read more in our newsletter.

• Launched new research and funding opportunities:

  • New RFP to support research on glycol vapors, an abundant and often overlooked option for rapid air disinfection during health emergencies.

  • Expressions of Interest for funding to develop clinical trial protocols evaluating far-UVC’s effectiveness in preventing respiratory infection transmission in congregate settings

• Engaged at leading biosecurity and indoor air conferences, with Blueprint leadership presenting and participating at AAAR, ASHRAE-AIVC IEQ, the Hoover Institution, and the Biosecurity Game Changers Workshop.

Opportunities

Jobs

• The Frontier Model Forum (FMF) are looking for an AI Biosecurity Manager to advance their workstream on frontier AI and biosafety and biosecurity threats. Apply by February 16 here.

• Amodo are looking for a Field Lead to own and drive their biosecurity engineering workstream. Apply here.

• The Mirror Biology Dialogues Fund is currently hiring for multiple roles - learn more at mbdf.org/jobs.

• Blueprint Biosecurity is seeking a full-time PPE Program Officer. Apply here by February 11.

• Blueprint is also currently accepting expressions of interest and will be posting a variety of programmatic and operations roles in Q1.

• RAND is hiring multiple AI & Biosecurity Research Residents at the Associate and Specialist levels of experience.

• Panoplia Laboratories are hiring for a head of operations! Over the next few months, they also plan on hiring for additional roles, including scientists, research associates, lab operations specialists, and trial operations associates.

• You can find more job opportunities at the 80,000 Hours job board.

Fellowships and Internships

• BlueDot is piloting a fellowship for builders who want to move fast and tackle concrete biosecurity problems. The pilot program is two weeks, with daily check-ins, stipends, and intros to the people you need to move fast. Interested? Reach out to jonah@bluedot.org

• Apply to the ICGEB Fellowships for Scientists in Biosecurity by March 31st.

• Apply to the 2026 NIH Office of Science Policy Summer Internship Program by February 27.

• The National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology is seeking spring Policy and Operations Interns with at least 20 hours of in-person availability per-week.

• Apply to the Next-Gen BioLeaders Program at SynBioBeta 2026 by February 1st.

Other opportunities

• BlueDot is running multiple rounds (intensive and part-time options) of the biosecurity course this quarter.

• The Introduction to Biosecurity course is looking for people to run local versions of the 4-week facilitated course. These local versions can be in person or online, with a specific country or regional focus. Apply here by 27th March

• Cambridge Biosecurity Hub’s AI × Biosecurity Symposium will take place on Monday, 16th March 2026, in Cambridge. They are in the early stages of planning this event and are coordinating with potential speakers from leading AIxBio organisations. They invite early expressions of interest to help guide content and share timely updates. For questions, email grace@cambiohub.org.

• DNA Screening Standards Consortium (DSSC): IBBIS is inviting expressions of interest from organisations and experts who can contribute to the Consortium’s technical drafting, piloting, and global alignment efforts. Learn more here, and please contact Sophie Peresson: sophie@ibbis.bio for more information.

• Sequence Biosecurity Risk Consortium (SBRC): In 2026, IBBIS will continue to grow its SBRC membership with global experts, with an additional focus on the Asia and European regions and expanding its technical goals. Learn more here and please contact Rassin Lababidi rassin@ibbis.bio for more information.

• Sentinel Bio is looking for advisors and part-time collaborators with expertise at the intersection of law enforcement, counterterrorism, and biosecurity.

• SecureDNA is interested in hearing from individuals who have experience in B2B sales, strategic communications, and growth marketing, especially in the biotech space.

• Oxford Biosecurity Group has launched a talent database for people interested in leading projects and starting organisations in biosecurity. Apply here by 27th February to be included in the next review round.

We regularly solicit updates from a group of organizations that we believe are doing impactful work to reduce GCBRs in order to improve transparency, facilitate collaboration, and otherwise accelerate progress in our community. Do you have any opportunities (jobs, events, etc.) you would like to share with our network? Please use this form to submit them.

Did you find this newsletter helpful? Do you have ideas on how we could improve it? Please fill out this brief feedback form or email hello@tessa.fyi.

Cover image credit: The National Library of Medicine, https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/catalog/nlm:nlmuid-101398617-img

Happy reading!

—Tessa and Anemone

Subscribe now

CEPI

CEPI is a global partnership working to accelerate the development of vaccines and other biologic countermeasures against epidemic and pandemic threats.

• SynBio Africa 4.0 (Kigali): On 23 July, CEPI co-moderated a panel on biosecurity and equity, highlighting synergies vital to Africa’s bioeconomy and 100DM progress.

• Joint Blog: On 8 September, CEPI, WEF, and IBBIS published Securing the Bioeconomy in the Age of AI, featuring the BioFunders Compact, Responsible Biodesign principles, and IBBIS.

• NATO Biodefense Panel (Lisbon): On 9-11 September, CEPI showcased how 100DM capabilities advance NATO CBRN objectives alongside partners from Portugal, the U.S. Army, and the Council on Strategic Risks.

• Sentinel Bio Partnership: On 20 September, CEPI announced a new collaboration to embed biosecurity-by-design in CEPI’s AI-driven Pandemic Preparedness Engine, balancing open access with misuse risks.

• UNGA Roundtable (New York): On 23 September, CEPI and Foreign Policy convened leaders in health, AI, and biosecurity to accelerate responsible AI development for rapid vaccine design.

NTI | bio

The NTI | bio program works to identify gaps and promote lasting systemic change to improve biotechnology governance, strengthen biosecurity and pandemic preparedness, and reduce global catastrophic biological risks.

• NTI | bio launched Enhancing Transparency for Bioscience Research and Development, a new report outlining practical recommendations to strengthen the global norm against biological weapons development and use.

• NTI | bio held an event on Sept 10 with honorary co-host U.S. Senator Todd Young on Capitol Hill to discuss the modernization of biotechnology governance and biosecurity practices to ensure innovation is protected.

• NTI’s AIxBio Global Forum released a statement signed by leading global experts calling for urgent action to safeguard rapidly advancing AIxBio capabilities to prevent misuse while enabling scientific benefits.

• NTI | bio partnered with Lattice Automation to design and pilot a standard for capturing and transmitting metadata alongside DNA or protein sequences. The additional context provided by this standard, known as the Biodesign Metadata Exchange (BMDE), can help biosecurity decision-makers assess risks more effectively by increasing their understanding of not only the sequence itself but also the design process behind it.

Global Health Security Network

The Global Health Security Network brings together policymakers, technical experts, and regional partners to strengthen global preparedness through cross-border collaboration, evidence-based policy, and coordinated detection and response to biological threats.

The Global Health Security Network (GHSN) is excited to host the Global Health Security Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, June 9–12, 2026. GHS2026 is the premier international gathering for policymakers, academics, and practitioners to connect, share groundbreaking research, and shape the future of global biosecurity and pandemic preparedness.

• We are now accepting submissions for speakers, posters, skills-based workshops, side events, and panels highlighting the latest advances in addressing health security threats.

• We welcome proposals on catastrophic biological risks, threat detection and mitigation, and strategies to reduce biosecurity vulnerabilities. Key themes include biotech governance, geopolitics, CBRNE threats, polycrisis, information hazards, pathogen detection, spillover prevention, and more.

Asia Centre for Health Security

The Asia Centre for Health Security (ACHS) (newsletter) is an academic think tank set up to strengthen Asia’s readiness for biological threats through scientific evidence, building expertise and capabilities, and forging strategic partnerships.

• The quarterly ACHS Webinar Series discusses innovative developments in health security in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond. The webinars are presented by leaders in the field of biosafety and biosecurity.

  • The next installment, “Governance of Dual-use Risks of Synthetic Biology: Recent Efforts in China”, will be held on 23 October 2025, Thursday at 6pm (GMT +08:00). It will be presented by Prof Weiwen Zhang, Baiyang Chair Professor of Synthetic Biology, Tianjin University. Register at https://asia-chs.org/webinar/achs-webinar-series/ before 22 October, Wednesday at 5pm (GMT+8:00).

• On 11-12 September 2025, ACHS organised the Deliberate Biothreat Events (DBE) workshop in Singapore. The workshop, which covered a diverse range of topics in the DBE landscape, included 34 delegates with expertise in healthcare, public health, policy, defense, and law enforcement disciplines from 13 countries.

Council on Strategic Risks

The Council on Strategic Risks (CSR) is a nonprofit, non-partisan security policy institute devoted to anticipating, analyzing and addressing core systemic risks to security in the 21st century, with special examination of the ways in which these risks intersect and exacerbate one another.

• CSR’s Global Biosecurity Accelerator partnered with the Bundeswehr Institute for Microbiology to host our first mid-career international fellows and the Berlin Biosecurity Dialogue, which focused on frontier capabilities for early warning. Susanne Riegraf, Deputy of the Federal Government Commissioner for Disarmament and Arms Control, provided strong opening remarks about deterring BW threats.

• In September, CSR published an initial analysis of biodefense trends within the budget-in-brief documents from the FY 2026 US President’s Budget Request.

• CSR hosted an event on supply chain vulnerabilities and leveraging biomanufacturing, coordinated with the new US House BIOtech Caucus. Representative Chrissy Houlahan provided closing remarks, highlighting the event’s theme of harnessing American innovation to bolster biotechnology and biomanufacturing.

Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

The Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics (CCDD) at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health focuses on improving methods for infectious disease modeling and statistical analysis, reducing biosecurity risks, engaging with policymakers to enhance decision-making, and training the next generation of scientists.

• Lipsitch was quoted in an article in Science on 7/11/25 on NIH’s suspension of dozens of pathogen studies over ‘gain-of-function’ concerns.

• Lipsitch was featured on Sam Harris’ podcast Making Sense: Are we Prepared for the Next Pandemic? on 7/21/25

• Lipsitch co-authored What is the relationship between viral prospecting in animals and medical countermeasure development?

• On 10/2, Lipsitch participated as a panelist at the American Enterprise Institute’s workshop: Biosafety and Biosecurity for DURC and PEPP: Retrospective and Prospective Considerations for Policy.

• On 1/1/26, Lipsitch will join Stanford University as the Michael and Barbara Berberian Professor and Senior Fellow in the Center for International Security and Cooperation, part of the Freeman-Spogli Institute, where his work will focus on biosecurity. His scientific research will continue through appointments in the Department of Medicine (School of Medicine) and the Department of Biology (School of Humanities and Sciences).

Blueprint Biosecurity

Blueprint Biosecurity is a nonprofit dedicated to achieving breakthroughs in humanity’s ability to prevent, mitigate, and suppress pandemics.

• Launched an RFP to fund research projects incorporating glycol vapor air disinfection into comprehensive pandemic preparedness and response strategies.

• Launched an RFI to understand recent insights and advances in the ocular dosimetry of far-UVC. These insights aim to inform safety guidelines, technological innovation, and adoption strategies.

• Published the article “Transmission Suppression Trials Are Hard” to Blueprint’s Far-UVC Field Notes substack. This post looks at why that evidence is difficult to translate into infection data, and how to design trials that produce results decision makers can act on, and what we know so far on far-UVC efficacy in this light.

• Posted a list of funded programs on our website here.

UNIDIR

The United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) is an autonomous institution within the United Nations that conducts independent research on pressing global challenges related to disarmament, arms control and international security.

UNIDIR has recently launched a new paper! Louison Mazeaud and Andraz Kastelic, “Cyberbiosecurity: A Matter of International Peace and Security?” UNIDIR, Geneva, 2025. https://doi.org/10.37559/WMD/25/CBW/02.

The global bioeconomy is growing rapidly notably aided by the convergence of biotechnology with advanced and powerful information and communication technologies (ICT). To better understand the nexus between ICT and the biological field, this paper begins with an outline of some of the benefits introduced by the integration of advanced ICT in biological research and development. It then introduces the above definition of the concept of ‘cyberbiosecurity’ and proceeds to outline some of the key risks at this nexus.

Pandemic Center, Brown University School of Public Health

The Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health works to reduce vulnerabilities and increase resilience to pandemics, other biological emergencies, and the harms they pose to health, peace, security, and prosperity.

• Pandemic Center leaders Beth Cameron, Wilmot James, and Georgia Lagoudas drove recommendations to further pandemic prevention, preparedness and response, biosecurity, and clean indoor air.

• Clean Indoor Air

  • We hosted “Healthy Indoor Air: A Global Call to Action,” the inaugural United Nations High-Level Side Event with over 300 in attendance. France, Montenegro and 165 partner countries signed the “Global Pledge on Healthy Indoor Air” to help make indoor air healthy for all.

  • We launched airclub.org as a global coalition of champions of clean indoor air.

  • We published “Clean Indoor Air: A Guide for State Leaders to Improve Indoor Air Quality” with 20 contributing organizations. It provides an evidence-based roadmap for state and local leaders to strengthen indoor air quality policy.

• Our Game Changer Fellow Jon Arizti Sanz had his recent work with IPPS published Advancing the 100 Days Mission for Diagnostics: 2025 Global Gap Assessment

Centre for Long-Term Resilience

The Biosecurity Policy Unit at the Centre for Long-Term Resilience (CLTR) works closely with the UK Government and other stakeholders to reduce extreme biological risks.

• We published the RAND-CLTR Global Risk Index for AI-enabled Biological Tools, a structured framework for assessing tools based on their capabilities, accessibility, and technological maturity. We provide a landscape overview of developments and offer five recommendations for model developers, funders, and policymakers.

• We have been working on a cost-benefit analysis for synthetic nucleic acid screening in the UK to compare the current voluntary guidance with mandated screening and will publish our findings by the end of 2025.

• We have been developing our thinking on AI agents and defensive acceleration as it applies to biosecurity. Our AI-Biosecurity Policy Manager Richard Moulange has begun publishing on this topic as a part of the Asterisk Fellowship.

• We submitted written evidence to the National Security Strategy Inquiry and the Medicine Security Inquiry in the UK parliament, and our Dr Paul-Enguerrand Fady will be providing oral evidence on the latter in October 2025.

1Day Sooner

1Day Sooner (news) is a nonprofit organization that advocates for high-impact medical studies and the efficient development and deployment of life-saving medical research and public health interventions.

• We launched a Cooperative Participant Organization that aims to provide flexible support, accelerate recruitment, and integrate the voices of healthy participants throughout the clinical research process for challenge trials and other early-phase trials with healthy participants. This program will help accelerate academic trial research and proactively incorporate participants’ voices directly into studies. Researchers at Leiden University, Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Research Programme, University of Oxford, and others are the first collaborators of 1Day Sooner’s CPO program. The CPO collaborates with institutions globally, with a current focus on Europe, North America, and Africa.

• Our new article in Nature Reviews Immunology explores the challenging landscape of hepatitis C vaccine development, specifically through subunit, virus-like particle, viral vector, and DNA and RNA vaccine methods.

SecureDNA

SecureDNA offers free, ultra-fast, and privacy-preserving DNA synthesis screening to detect regulated, controlled, or hazardous sequences; it is the only system that also screens millions of predicted functional variants to prevent evasion.

• SecureDNA participated in EBRC’s Workshop on International Best Practices for Nucleic Acid Synthesis Screening this past July in Brussels, where we were invited to speak about technical needs for robust sequence screening now and in the future.

• We received a generous grant from the Survival and Flourishing Fund to continue our critical work, with a focus on developing sophisticated screening resilience to novel AI sequences of concern (SoCs), as well as promoting global DNA synthesis screening education and adoption.

SecureBio

SecureBio (newsletter) is a nonprofit research organization working on new technologies and policy proposals to delay, detect, and defend against catastrophic pandemics.

• Nucleic Acid Observatory (NAO)

  • The NAO received a major grant, allowing the team to substantially expand its biosurveillance system. As part of this scale-up, we are hiring for critical roles in Partnerships, Response, Virology, and Wet Lab Management.

  • Published a post about ways to implement the planned Biothreat Radar for which $50m has been set aside in the President’s FY 2026 Budget.

• AI-Bio

  • Three benchmarks developed by the team – World Class Biology, the Human Pathogen Capabilities Test, and the Molecular Biology Capabilities Test – were publicly cited in AI system cards for the first time: OpenAI’s GPT-5 and Meta’s Code World Model.

  • Developed ABC-Bench, which tests agentic models’ biocapabilities, and ABLE, an eval suite that assesses the ability of LLMs and agents to use Biological AI Models in a dual-use protein design workflow.

  • The AI team will soon post a job opening for a junior software engineer, and welcome initial enquiries or recommendations.

Sentinel Bio

Sentinel Bio is a non-profit philanthropic fund focused on eliminating pandemic risks.

• Strategy

  • We shared an update on our current priorities, continuing our focus on safeguarding biological AI models and commercial nucleic acid synthesis: Why We’re Betting on AI-Bio Security and Governance

  • We’re exploring alternative access control ‘chokepoints’ for biosecurity, including materials, reagents, and services

• AIxBio safeguards and evidence

  • Launched a partnership with CEPI on managed access for dual-use biological AI models

  • Expanding previous work cataloguing biological design tools with Epoch AI

• Nucleic acid synthesis security

  • Completed a project to map all providers of custom gene-length dsDNA

  • Launched a project on mechanisms for sharing information across the industry

  • Working with Gary Abel on function-based screening

  • Joshua will be in Singapore in November for conferences on DNA synthesis governance hosted by the EBRC, IBBIS, and Asia CHS

Mirror Biology Dialogues Fund

The Mirror Biology Dialogues Fund (newsletter) supports efforts to understand risks and develop governance frameworks for mirror biology research before it becomes technically feasible to create mirror life.

• We co-organized and hosted the Paris Conference on Risks from Mirror Life, June 12-13 with the Institut Pasteur. You can read the conference report, learn more about the event from the Institut Pasteur, and watch the talks from the first day.

• With Patrick Cai from the University of Manchester, we co-hosted a workshop focused on technical questions related to the feasibility and governance of mirror life prior to a larger conference on Engineering and Safeguarding Synthetic Life on September 17-18. A writeup will be shared in the coming months.

• The UK Government Office for Science hosted a roundtable discussion on mirror life that recommended preventing its creation.

• The UNESCO International Bioethics Committee released a draft report recommending a precautionary global moratorium on mirror life.

• The German Central Committee on Biological Safety released a comment recognizing the potential risks of mirror life and endorsing further discussion.

Open Philanthropy, Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness team

Open Philanthropy’s Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness team strives to prevent catastrophic biological risks through supporting efforts to safeguard dual-use technologies, detect and block the transmission of pandemic pathogens, and build the field’s capacity to solve these hard problems.

• Welcomed two new team members to advance our work: Senior Program Associate Christian Ruhl and Chief of Staff Conor McGurk

• Discussed the team’s work on the 80,000 Hours podcast, and wrote up some of our thinking in our blog here

• Expanded our funding of SecureBio to accelerate a pathogen-agnostic pandemic early warning system

• Growing our grantmaking capacity through hiring, and seeking new funding opportunities – see jobs & opportunities section below

IBBIS

The International Biosecurity and Biosafety Initiative for Science (IBBIS) (news) is a Geneva-based nonprofit that works collaboratively with global partners to strengthen biosecurity norms and develop innovative tools to uphold them.

• IBBIS co-authored a new paper, Strengthening nucleic acid biosecurity screening against generative protein design tools, showing that synthesis screening software can detect AI-designed proteins, but requires patching. The work sets red-teaming precedents, including the first formal endorsement of tiered access to info-hazardous data by a leading journal.

• The Screening Evaluation Portal has been launched, offering evaluations of sequence screening using a standard test set developed by US NIST. IBBIS invites synthesis providers, screening tool developers, and others to sign up for evaluations and share within their network.

• IBBIS will host an international convening on November 6 in Singapore. The event will bring together governments, industry, and international organizations to advance harmonized global governance of DNA synthesis screening. The conversations will mark a major milestone toward aligning global efforts, strengthening shared standards, and highlight gaps and opportunities for action.

Opportunities

Jobs

• Open Philanthropy is hiring grantmakers to help reduce catastrophic risks from biology. (Note: no preexisting bio background necessary.) They’re also eager to hear from potential grantees with ambitious project ideas. They’re especially interested in work on physical transmission suppression, metagenomic sequencing, PPE, medical countermeasures, biosecurity capacity-building, and at the intersection of AI and catastrophic biological risk. Apply by Oct 19 here. If you’re working on something promising or want to contribute, please fill out the Expression of Interest form.

• Two-year postdoctoral fellowship at CISAC (Stanford) to develop practical criteria for assessing the scientific and social value of “risky research”, working with Prof. Marc Lipsitch and Prof. M. Anthony Mills. Ideal candidates have a PhD in biology, biotechnology, ethics, philosophy of science, or allied fields, with the ability to bridge science, philosophy, and policy. More information via this link. (Having worked with both Marc and Tony, I (Anemone) can strongly recommend applying!)

• NTI is seeking a Vice President for Global Biological Policy and Programs. This position reports to the CEO and supervises a team of nine. This is a full-time position working in Washington, DC.

• Nucleic Acid Observatory: hiring for critical roles in Partnerships, Response, Virology, and Wet Lab Management.

• OpenAI: Lead Research Engineer / Scientist, Chemical & Biological Risk

• UNSGM Regional coordinator for the Latin America and the
  Caribbean region. Apply by October 9.

Conferences, Workshops, Calls for Papers

• 2026 Global Health Security Conference, Kuala Lumpur, June 2026: Call for Abstracts.

• Applied Biosafety Call for Papers for a forthcoming Special Issue focused on the myriad of topics associated with global biosafety management. Learn more and submit by November 1 here.

• Cyberbiosecurity Quarterly Call for Papers: Learn more and submit your papers for the inaugural issue here.

• Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology Call for Papers for a forthcoming special topic on “Synthetic Nucleic Acid Technology: The Biosecurity Landscape”. Initial submissions due November 29.

• AI x Bio Workshop, Strategies for Responding to Exponential AI and Biotechnology Growth, 1-day workshop in Washington, DC, November 13. Virtual attendance option. Abstract submissions open until October 20.

• AI for Biorisk Management Workshop: 3-day workshop in Malta, February 11-13, 2026.

Other opportunities

• ELBI Fellowship: Apply for the 2026 cohort by October 12. (Both of us, Tessa and Anemone, are ELBI alumni and strongly recommend applying!)

• Applications are now open for CSR’s AI and National Security Convergence Fellowship, designed for mid-career professionals with experience in national security and emerging technology/AI fields.

• UK ARIA: various opportunities; see here for more information.

• A number of AI-focused fellowships highlighted on Peter Wildeford’s Substack.

• The Biosecurity Forecasting Group has spun out of the Oxford Biosecurity Group; they are currently offering consulting for forecasting services such as horizon-scanning, and will offer an open-source forecasting dashboard in future.

We regularly solicit updates from a group of organizations that we believe are doing impactful work to reduce GCBRs in order to improve transparency, facilitate collaboration, and otherwise accelerate progress in our community. Do you have any opportunities (jobs, events, etc.) you would like to share with our network? Please use this form to submit them.

Did you find this newsletter helpful? Do you have ideas on how we could improve it? Please fill out this brief feedback form or email hello@tessa.fyi.

Cover image credit: Human Natural Killer Cell”, NIAID on Flickr / CC BY-NC 2.0

Fellowship Opportunities

• Council on Strategic Risks Ending Bioweapons Fellowship

  • Apply by August 11

  • “Fellows will gain deep knowledge of what it takes to address biological weapons activities and a strengthened network among biosecurity and biotechnology experts. Moreover, they will become part of an incredible network of alumni”

  • Part-time, 10-month fellowship (September 2025 - June 2026), with a stipend. Monthly virtual meetings and 3 in-person events. Restricted to citizens of NATO member nations, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and the Republic of South Korea. (Tessa did this fellowship in 2023!)

• Christine Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Graduate Fellowship

  • Apply by August 20

  • "This Mirzayan Fellowship offers a unique opportunity to obtain the essential skills and knowledge needed to work in science policy at the federal, state, or local levels"

  • Full-time, 12-week program (March 2 - May 22, 2026) in Washington, D.C. Hands-on training at the National Academies. Restricted to graduate students in dissertation phase or terminal degree holders within 5 years, based in the US without need for visa sponsorship.

• Horizon Institute for Public Service Horizon Fellowship

  • Apply by August 28

  • “The Horizon Fellowship places experts in AI, biotechnology, and other emerging technologies in federal agencies, congressional offices and committees, and leading think tanks in Washington, DC for up to two years”

  • Full-time, 6-to-12 month fellowship (starting January 2026), with a stipend. Multiple fellowship tracks with different eligibility requirements. Restricted to people with eligibility to work in the USA that are willing to live in Washington, DC. (Anemone is a current Fellow and highly recommends this!)

• US NASEM Biotechnology Regulatory Fellowship Program

  • Apply by August 31

  • "Fellows will identify new, as needed, regulatory frameworks for the anticipated cutting-edge products expected to emerge over the next several decades and thereby expand options for thoughtful, effective regulation"

  • Full-time, 6-month fellowship (February 1 - July 31, 2026) in Washington, D.C. with $70,000 stipend. Includes capstone projects with agency mentors. Restricted to U.S. citizens with advanced degrees and 3-5 years of relevant professional experience.

• Asia Centre for Health Security Fellowship Program

  • Apply by September 16

  • “The ACHS Fellowship Program aims to inspire and connect the next generation of biosecurity leaders and innovators… [it] provides an opportunity for talented graduate students and professionals to deepen their expertise, expand their network, and build their leadership skills”

  • Part-time, 1-year fellowship (January - December 2026). Mentorship and attendance to several biosecurity events. Restricted to people who are citizens of (or working in) an eligible Asia-Pacific country.

• Rosetta Commons Biosecurity Fellowship

  • Apply on rolling basis until filled

  • "A unique opportunity to work at the intersection of cutting-edge protein design science and biosecurity policy… Unlike traditional think-tank fellowships that involve policy analysis from a distance, this role offers a unique opportunity to work closely alongside our scientific community, to draw from their perspectives, and help bring our voices to policy discussions"

  • Remote, 12-month fellowship, part-time (~20 hours/week). Includes travel funding to Rosetta labs and conferences. Requires minimum 15 hours/week commitment and eligibility to travel to US (ideally EU). PhD students need advisor pre-approval.

• CNAS Shawn Brimley Next Generation National Security Leaders Fellowship

  • Apply by September 21

  • "This year-long, part-time professional development fellowship aims to bring together young professionals across sectors within the national security field to learn best practices and lessons in leadership"

  • Part-time, 1-year fellowship with dinner series and week-long international study tour. Hybrid format with in-person attendance strongly recommended. Restricted to U.S. citizens ages 27-35 with at least 4 years of professional experience.

Workshop and Conference Opportunities

• AIxBio Game Changers Workshop

  • Apply by August 22

  • “Apply to this workshop to learn more about policy opportunities in biosurveillance, biodefense, and pandemic preparedness; connect with the leaders shaping decisions in DC; and discover how you can join them in making an impact”

  • 3-day workshop (October 24-26, 2025) in Washington, D.C. Open to professionals considering career transitions into biosecurity policy, particularly at the AI intersection. No prior policy experience required.

• NTI | bio Next Generation Biosecurity Delegation

  • Apply by September 7

  • “Through this opportunity, we seek to foster an energized, internationally connected, and diverse network of next-generation leaders working to strengthen global biosecurity”

  • Travel opportunity to Geneva, Switzerland for BWC meetings (December 8-12, 2025). Includes poster session presentation and networking with international experts. Restricted to ages 18-35.

Other Opportunities

• Job: Program Officer, AI x Bio, at Sentinel Bio (rolling applications)

• Job: SecureBio is looking for an Operations Associate and an Operations Manager. The Nucleic Acid Observatory will soon open hiring rounds for about five additional positions – be sure to keep an eye out on our website and social media channels, as these job posts will go live soon.

• Funding: ACX Grants (due August 15). Grants between $5,000 and $50,000, with rare cases up to $100,000. Past projects include development of drugs for treating parasitic worms, platforms for prediction markets, anti-mosquito drones, or artificial kidneys research.

• Publication: upcoming Research Topic from Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology: Synthetic Nucleic Acid Technology: The Biosecurity Landscape. Manuscript summary submission deadline November 29.

Subscribe now

We regularly solicit updates from a group of organizations that we believe are doing impactful work to reduce GCBRs in order to improve transparency, facilitate collaboration, and otherwise accelerate progress in our community. Do you have any opportunities (jobs, events, etc.) you would like to share with our network? Please use this form to submit them.

Did you find this newsletter helpful? Do you have ideas on how we could improve it? Please fill out this brief feedback form or email hello@tessa.fyi.

Cover image credit: US National Library of Medicine.

• A paper on the responsibility of Principal Investigators for flagging research with Dual-Use or Pandemic Risk;

• A new multimodal benchmark that measures how well AIs can provide expert level assistance for work with viruses;

• An open letter from 64 global experts calling for fair compensation in clinical research participation;

• The final version of Blueprint Biosecurity's Far-UVC recommendations and a new Far-UVC funding opportunity;

• The Implementation Plan for CEPI’s biosecurity strategy;

• And more!

Subscribe now

Blueprint Biosecurity

Blueprint Biosecurity is a nonprofit dedicated to achieving breakthroughs in humanity’s ability to prevent, mitigate, and suppress pandemics.

• Published final version of our Far-UVC Blueprint, outlining recommendations for answering critical questions facing far-UVC.

• Launched the EXHALE RFP. Up to $1M in funding. Focusing on quantifying how much far-UVC is needed to inactivate viral pathogens inside real, human-generated respiratory aerosols. $200 referral bonus available.

• Presented on our research into glycol vapors and Far-UVC at the Biophysics of Airborne Infection workshop and Healthy Buildings Europe.

Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security

The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security (CHS) (newsletter) explores how new policy approaches, scientific advances and technological innovations can improve organizations, systems, policies and tools to prevent and respond to pandemics and biological threats.

• Planning to host the 8th ELBI Research Symposium in Washington, DC, on July 16-17, and bring together the ELBI community to highlight the latest in health security. Journalist and author Carl Zimmer will be the dinner speaker at the symposium.

• Published a peer-reviewed paper in PLOS Computational Biology examining the dual-use capabilities of concern associated with biological AI models.

• Provided written comments to the European Commission's AI Office on the EU AI Act's definition of "general-purpose AI models," advocating for the inclusion of biological models within the regulatory scope.

• Submitted written comments to the US Office of Science and Technology Policy on biosecurity considerations for the 2025 National AI R&D Strategic Plan.

• Offered analysis and recommendations on strengthening oversight of advanced biological AI models to the Joint California Working Group on Frontier AI models.

1DaySooner

1Day Sooner (news) is a nonprofit organization that advocates for high-impact medical studies and the efficient development and deployment of life-saving medical research and public health interventions.

• 64 global experts across disciplines spanning philosophy, law, medicine, policy, public health, patient advocacy, and research ethics have published a forceful open letter in The American Journal of Bioethics, calling for a reexamination of entrenched attitudes toward payment for clinical research participation. Organized by 1Day Sooner, the open letter titled “Pursuing Fair and Just Compensation for Research Participants: An Open Letter to the Research Ethics Community” urges institutional review boards/research ethics committees (IRB/RECs) to reconsider payment conservatism, which often defaults to low or no compensation out of a misguided abundance of caution.

• 1Day's Regulatory Policy Director Enlli Lewis and the Global Health Technology Coalition’s Senior Multilateral Policy & Advocacy Officer Philip Kenol published an article examining the potential effects of significant staffing reductions at the FDA and an upcoming opportunity through the Prescription Drug User Fee Act reauthorization for Congress to invest in the FDA’s workforce and secure the agency’s ability to lead globally.

• 1Day Africa built and released a malaria vaccine impact tracker that shows total number of lives saved and malaria vaccines distributed throughout Africa and broken down by country.

Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics

The Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics (CCDD) (newsletter) at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health focuses on improving methods for infectious disease modeling and statistical analysis, reducing biosecurity risks, engaging with policymakers to enhance decision-making, and training the next generation of scientists.

• CCDD’s Director, Prof. Marc Lipsitch, authored a paper entitled Principal Investigator Responsibility for Flagging Research with Dual-Use or Pandemic Risk, commenting on the new U.S. Government dual-use policy by identifying preconditions for success, which are not fully laid out in the current regulations.

• Lipsitch worked with NTI | bio on implementation guidance for their International Bio Funders Compact, which helps ensure that funders and recipients support biosecurity and biosafety best practices.

• Lipsitch was invited as a global biosecurity expert to The Spirit of Asilomar and the Future of Biotechnology summit in California, where he served as a discussion leader for the Pathogens track, and to the Paris Conference on Risks from Mirror Life.

Asia Centre for Health Security

The Asia Centre for Health Security (ACHS) (newsletter) is a new academic think tank, set-up to strengthen Asia’s readiness for biological threats through scientific evidence, building of expertise and capabilities, and the forging of strategic partnerships. Our vision is a united and resilient Asia safeguarded against health security threats for the well-being of future generations.

• The Asia Centre for Health Security (ACHS) Webinar Series is held quarterly to discuss innovative developments in health security in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond. The webinars are presented by leading experts in the fields of biosafety and biosecurity. The next instalment will be held on 24 July 2025, Thursday at 5pm (GMT +08:00), on the topic of “Risk Assessment for Deliberate Biothreat Events”. It will be presented by Professor Paul Arbon, Matthew Flinders Distinguished Professor and Director of the Torrens Resilience Initiative, Flinders University. Register at https://asia-chs.org/webinar/achs-webinar-series/ before 23 July, 5pm (GMT+08:00).

• Following the successful launch of the ACHS Fellowship Program in 2025, ACHS is pleased to announce that the Program’s 2026 intake will open for applications in August 2025! This highly competitive programme unites exceptional graduate students and professionals globally and aims to inspire the next generation of biosecurity leaders. For more details, visit https://asia-chs.org/fellowship-programme/achs-fellowship-program/.

Sentinel Bio

Sentinel Bio is a non-profit philanthropic fund focused on eliminating pandemic risks.

• We are currently focusing narrowly on safeguards for advanced biotechnologies:

• AIxBio:

  • With the Frontier Model Forum, we’re supporting an ambitious wet lab study to help assess whether frontier AI systems can aid non-experts to carry out expert-level biological research tasks.

  • We’re partnering with SecureBio to evaluate biological design tools and integrated AI tool stacks.

• Nucleic acid governance:

  • We’re supporting an industry-led effort to build detailed risk-classification standards for nucleic acid sequences to enable enforceable screening policies.

  • We’re supporting various research projects, including to assess different nucleic acid products, map the DNA synthesis industry, and develop methods for function-based sequence screening.

  • We’re participating in various policy development efforts in the United States and Europe.

• Additional biotechnology access control chokepoints:

  • We’re looking into other ‘chokepoints’ for biotechnology governance interventions, including live virus repositories, outsourced virology services, and cloud labs.

• We hope to share more information about ongoing projects on our website soon.

Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI)

CEPI works to accelerate the development of vaccines and other biologic countermeasures against epidemic and pandemic threats so they can be accessible to all people in need.

• Following publication of its inaugural Biosecurity Strategy last year, in April 2025 CEPI published a corresponding Implementation Plan, outlining specific objectives, activities and timelines to achieve the Biosecurity Strategy across 2025-2026. Please see here for more info: https://cepi.net/biosecurity

• To support successful implementation of the Biosecurity Strategy, CEPI is looking to establish Framework Agreements with a small group of implementing partners, with technical capabilities across diverse topic areas in biosafety, biosecurity, and logistics. A Request for Proposals was published on 15 June; the deadline for submissions is 30 July.

• CEPI has featured its biosecurity work in a number of public events, including at the World Health Assembly at a Pandemic Action Network panel, and at this year’s BIO conference.

Council on Strategic Risks

The Council on Strategic Risks (CSR) is a nonprofit, non-partisan security policy institute devoted to anticipating, analyzing and addressing core systemic risks to security in the 21st century, with special examination of the ways in which these risks intersect and exacerbate one another.

• Members of CSR had the honor of developing the post-event entreaty on Condemning & Making Obsolete Biological Weapons following The Spirit of Asilomar and the Future of Biotechnology conference.

• Our staff provided insight into the recent developments and findings regarding treaties related to countering weapons of mass destruction, based on the US State Department’s annual compliance reports.

• The 2024-2025 cohort of the Fellowship for Ending Bioweapons Programs traveled to Boston, where the fellows engaged with leaders across academia and industry.

• John Moulton recently spoke during the National Academies’ event celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Biological Weapons Convention.

• Andy Weber recently spoke at the NATO Center of Excellence for Defense Against Terrorism.

• Read our team’s latest briefer: Biosecurity and the Republic of Georgia.

• Our next cohort of the Mid-Career Biodefense Bootcamp Fellowship will commence in August.

• Meet our recent additions to the staff!

Mirror Biology Dialogues Fund

The Mirror Biology Dialogues Fund (newsletter) supports efforts to understand risks and develop governance frameworks for mirror biology research before it becomes technically feasible to create mirror life.

• Alongside the Institut Pasteur, we hosted the Paris Conference on Risks from Mirror Life, the world’s first international meeting dedicated to understanding and addressing the risks posed by mirror organisms. There was broad agreement that mirror life should not be created, that regulation and law are necessary, and that further discussion should define regulatory boundaries that prevent the creation of mirror life while preserving progress in synthetic biology. See meeting summary and recorded talks.

• An entreaty on the risks of mirror life was endorsed by almost 100 attendees of February’s Spirit of Asilomar summit. It states that “mirror life should not be created unless future research convincingly demonstrates that it would not pose severe risks”.

• A report on biosecurity from the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change describes mirror life research as “high-risk, low-reward”.

• A UK expert roundtable stated that “there should be a coalition among funders, researchers, governments and civil society to develop appropriate guidelines to manage the development of mirror molecules and prevent the development of replicating mirror organisms.”

• Other recent articles: Le Monde, AFP, L’express, and Le Parisien (France), the Times and Financial Times (UK).

Pandemic Center, Brown University School of Public Health

The Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health works to reduce vulnerabilities and increase resilience to pandemics, other biological emergencies, and the harms they pose to health, peace, security, and prosperity.

• On July 17, the Pandemic Center will host a virtual event on mirror biology moderated by Senior Adviser Wilmot James and featuring James Smith, Deputy Director of the Mirror Biology Dialogues Fund, and Senior Adviser Beth Cameron.

• We are partnering with the U.S. National Academy of Medicine to support the reconvening of the G20 High-Level Independent Panel, focusing on recommendations to bolster surge financing for medical countermeasures and preparedness.

• In June, building on findings from the American Democracy and Health Security Initiative, we partnered with CDC Foundation, Common Health Coalition, Yale, Ariadne Labs, and the STAT Network to host a roundtable with state health officers and emergency managers on using digital and AI-enabled platforms to rapidly identify and respond to emerging threats.

• In June, we published our annual Impact Report.

• Tune in to Biosecurity: Changing the Game, a biweekly podcast by Game Changers Fellow Dinah Nasike.

SecureBio

SecureBio is a nonprofit research organization working on new technologies and policy proposals to delay, detect, and defend against catastrophic pandemics.

• The Nucleic Acid Observatory continues to expand its pathogen surveillance capabilities and has doubled its sequencing compared to Q1. Our genetic engineering detection system has now analyzed a total of 892 billion read pairs and identified 413 chimeras, with 43 benign positives. Our partners have developed dashboards that summarize which pathogens we detect in wastewater samples. The NAO is also scaling its Boston-based nasal swab sampling program. With several newly hired field samplers, we're now collecting hundreds of individual samples each week. This effort has enabled us to estimate the sensitivity of wastewater metagenomic sequencing, which we've written about here.

• The AI team has released its Virology Capabilities Test, a multimodal benchmark that measures how well AIs can provide expert level assistance for work with viruses. The research was covered in TIME. More information is also available in our write-up of the project. The team's biosafety evaluations of frontier models are in use by leading labs, including Anthropic, OpenAI, Google DeepMind and xAI. An overview of our AIxBio evaluations work can be found here. We have completed more benchmarks measuring expert capabilities on other topics, including: molecular and cell biology, human-infecting pathogens, and frontier biology problem solving. And we have developed agent eval suites that cover lab automation, DNA sequence design, and BDTs, as well as a new workstream covering agricultural biosecurity. We've delivered multiple briefings of our findings to senior stakeholders in industry and government. Lastly, the team partnered with the Forecasting Research Institute on a study about biosecurity risks from LLMs, which was also covered by TIME.

IBBIS

The International Biosecurity and Biosafety Initiative for Science (IBBIS) (news) is a Geneva-based nonprofit that works collaboratively with global partners to strengthen biosecurity norms and develop innovative tools to uphold them.

• We released practical resources to support customer screening, including forms for onboarding new customers, decision guidance for orders including sequences of concern, and customer profiles that illustrate the challenges of verifying legitimacy, which have been used in workshops around the world

• Recent IBBIS policy efforts in the EU include contributing to a joint briefing on Priorities to Uphold European Biosecurity in 2025, a collaborative responsive on Securing Europe's Biotechnology Future submitted to the European Commission’s call for evidence on the forthcoming EU Biotech Act, and a submission calling on the commission to prioritise biosecurity in their bioeconomy strategy.

• IBBIS is collaborating across the synthesis screening community to support data resources and software tools that encourage robust screening, including acting as the institutional home for an international consortium developing standard test sets and risk assessments for sequences of concern. We are seeking additional international experts in pathogens or synthesis technology to join this consortium.

Centre for Long-Term Resilience

The Biosecurity Policy Unit at the Centre for Long-Term Resilience (CLTR) works closely with the UK Government and other stakeholders to reduce extreme biological risks.

• We kicked off the London Defence Conference in May 2025 with a CLTR Biosecurity Resilience panel event featuring experts from the UK Cabinet Office, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, and the Ministry of Defence.

• We privately circulated and briefed our 2025 RAND-CLTR Global Risk Index for AI-Enabled Biological Tools to multiple government teams and relevant intergovernmental bodies. A public version of this report is currently being prepared.

• Our team participated in several events including the NATO Science for Peace and Security Programme in Malta, the international conference on the Risk from Mirror Life in France, the Council on Strategic Risk's Berlin Biosecurity Dialogue, and the Engineering Biology Research Consortium's Workshop on International Best Practices for Nucleic Acid Synthesis Screening.

• We published a response to the release of the UK's Strategic Defence Review and engaged on the UK Biological Security Strategy Implementation Report.

Opportunities

Jobs

• 1Day Sooner is seeking a People Operations Lead to support and enhance our remote-first, high-impact team. We’re looking for a team member with the experience and skills to take ownership of core functions with minimal supervision, and who is capable of and excited about designing and implementing improvements to our people ops processes. Deadline to apply is July 18.

• Rosetta Commons Opens Applications for a 2025 Biosecurity Fellow: This unique 12-month fellowship offers the opportunity to work at the intersection of computational protein design and biosecurity policy. Fellows will engage with leading scientists and contribute to the responsible development of AI-enabled design tools.

Other opportunities

• Frontiers “Synthetic Nucleic Acid Technology: The Biosecurity Landscape” are soliciting submissions that explore biosecurity implications as they specifically relate to synthetic nucleic acid technology: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/71061/synthetic-nucleic-acid-technology-the-biosecurity-landscape

  • Initial manuscript summaries due September 3rd, 2025.

• IBBIS will be hosting biosecurity drinks in Washington, DC, USA, next week, July 15th. We (Tessa and Anemone) will be there! You can register here.

We regularly solicit updates from a group of organizations that we believe are doing impactful work to reduce GCBRs in order to improve transparency, facilitate collaboration, and otherwise accelerate progress in our community. Do you have any opportunities (jobs, events, etc.) you would like to share with our network? Please use this form to submit them.

Did you find this newsletter helpful? Do you have ideas on how we could improve it? Please fill out this brief feedback form or email hello@tessa.fyi.

Cover image credit: http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/101392770

• A Summit on the present H5N1 influenza outbreak;

• A UK national poll about public attitudes towards extreme risks;

• An extensive report on far-UVC;

• A response to the Administration's Request for Comment on its AI Action Plan;

• Introducing the Mirror Biology Dialogues Fund and celebrating the Asia Centre for Health Security’s first year anniversary;

• A record nine open jobs and fellowships (see opportunities section at the end);

• And more!

Sentinel Bio

Sentinel Bio is a non-profit philanthropic fund focused on eliminating pandemic risks.

• We have launched and continued key partnerships to strengthen safeguards on advanced biotechnologies:

  • We launched a new partnership with the Centre for Long-Term Resilience. Our support will allow CLTR to advance its work on AI-enabled biology and nucleic acid synthesis screening.

  • We supported Foreign Policy’s Emerging Threats Forum at the 2025 Munich Security Conference.

  • We’re continuing our collaboration with the Pandemic Action Network on nucleic acid synthesis screening in Europe.

• For our work on the governance of synthetic nucleic acids, we are looking into how we can best support policy research and advocacy in the United States and European Union. If there is anyone you think we should be speaking with on either of those fronts, please get in touch.

• Janika Schmitt has joined our team and is developing our strategy for pandemic countermeasure technologies — please reach out if you’d like to connect on these issues!

SecureBio

SecureBio is a nonprofit research organization working on new technologies and policy proposals to delay, detect, and defend against catastrophic pandemics.

• The Nucleic Acid Observatory (NAO) had a busy and exciting quarter. Our wastewater surveillance system now ingests & analyzes sequencing data from more than a dozen sewersheds, including some as part of a DOD subcontract. We are also growing our program to collect individual nasal swabs. Thanks to a large new grant, we will be able to massively scale up all our biosurveillance efforts. Transformer recently covered NAO's work in an article. This is just a selection of what we worked on this quarter: a more detailed update on all of the NAO's projects is available here.

• SecureDNA continues to grow its outreach work in Asia in order to promote safe and trustworthy order screening in the global gene synthesis industry. We have added a Strategic Engagement Advisor, Andrew Dale (andrew [at] securedna.org), to enhance our engagement with providers beyond our existing Chinese partnerships. The team has successfully onboarded several new synthesis providers globally this quarter, expanding its screening network and biosecurity impact.

Panoplia Laboratories

​Panoplia Laboratories is a nonprofit organization that evaluates the risks and capabilities of AI-driven biology through wet lab research.

• Joe Torres is our new Executive Director and Brian Wang has moved on to become a Program Director at ARIA.

• We’ve shifted toward assessing AI bio capabilities in the physical wet lab, and we’re gearing up to run a wet lab novice uplift study on 100+ participants over 10-12 weeks.

Pandemic Center, Brown University School of Public Health

The Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health works to reduce vulnerabilities and increase resilience to pandemics, other biological emergencies, and the harms they pose to health, peace, security, and prosperity.

• The Pandemic Center, with CEPI and NTI | bio, hosted a side event at the Munich Security Conference with the Biosecurity Game Changers fellows and next-gen leaders to accelerate biosecurity in the context of the 100 days mission, facilitating a biosecurity rising leaders' declaration.

• In March and April, the Pandemic Center weighed in on the biosecurity impacts of recent U.S. staffing and program cuts.

• In March, the Pandemic Center and the National Academy of Medicine co-hosted a GHS Financing Forum to discuss urgent global health security financing needs for emerging and future biological threats.

• We published a brief on the wastewater surveillance landscape in the U.S. and an op-ed in STAT on the importance of wastewater surveillance for tracking bird flu.

• In December, we hosted a roundtable to advance clean indoor air policy. We recently published a brief and pre-print outlining a policy roadmap to improve indoor air quality.

Mirror Biology Dialogues Fund

The Mirror Biology Dialogues Fund (newsletter) supports efforts to understand risks and develop governance frameworks for mirror biology research before it becomes technically feasible to create mirror life.

• In December 2024, an article in Science authored by an international group of 38 leading researchers and supported by an in-depth technical report described risks from the creation of “mirror bacteria”—hypothesized synthetic organisms in which all biomolecules have reversed chirality. The group argued that mirror bacteria should not be created due to the unprecedented magnitude of potential risks and called for a global effort to identify appropriate governance approaches. MBDF was established to support this discussion.

• In February, MBDF supported a summit with approximately 300 leaders in biotechnology, bioethics, and related fields. A Science news article described widespread agreement at the summit that mirror life should not be created.

• In June, MBDF will co-host the Paris Conference on Risks from Mirror Life with the Institut Pasteur. This will be the first public event dedicated to the topic.

• MBDF is supporting a US National Academies workshop (Fall 2025) and events in the UK (Fall 2025) and Singapore (Spring 2026). Subscribe to our newsletter for updates.

Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security

The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security (CHS) (newsletter) explores how new policy approaches, scientific advances and technological innovations can improve organizations, systems, policies and tools to prevent and respond to pandemics and biological threats.

• We held an AIxBio side event for Paris AI Action Summit discussing the benefits and risks of AI and the life sciences. CHS leadership also attended the Summit. Read our Director’s takeaways

• Read our Response to the Trump Administration's Request for Comment on its AI Action Plan, which included recommendations for innovations in AI and biosecurity.

• Read CHS’s Response to the US AISI’s draft guidance related to dual-use foundation models and biological AI models.

• CHS hosted a side event for government officials and other thought leaders at the Munich Security Conference to discuss how the UK, Germany, and the US are assessing biological risks and utilizing technology to better prevent and prepare for biological threats. Read our Director’s insights and takeaways and our Horizon Fellow’s blog post.

• CHS hosted an event on April 4th for Congressional staffers focused on the prevention and response to large scale biological events.

IBBIS

The International Biosecurity and Biosafety Initiative for Science (IBBIS) (news) is a Geneva-based nonprofit that works collaboratively with global partners to strengthen biosecurity norms and develop innovative tools to uphold them.

• Our project creating a map of global DNA synthesis providers and policies has already completed stakeholder interviews across Mexico, India, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Additional collaborators still welcome!

• We've launched a new project on international standards for synthesis screening, and have been engaging with policymakers around the world, including via a comment on the New Zealand Gene Technology Bill, an EU parliamentary roundtable, and a presentation at the Australia Group intersessional meeting.

• We presented at the Munich Security Conference, AI Action Summit and IFBA Global Voices Conference. In Q2, find our team at SynBioBeta (USA), EBSA (Netherlands), Pasteur Institute Workshop on Mirror Life (France), BIO 2025 (USA).

Council on Strategic Risks

The Council on Strategic Risks (CSR) is a nonprofit, non-partisan security policy institute devoted to anticipating, analyzing and addressing core systemic risks to security in the 21st century, with special examination of the ways in which these risks intersect and exacerbate one another.

• Applications are open for the inaugural cohort of our International Mid-Career Biosecurity Fellowship. The program will begin virtually in mid-May and conclude with in-person sessions June 16-20, 2025 in Germany. Eligibility includes citizens from NATO member states and NATO’s four official Indo-Pacific partners (Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and the Republic of Korea). Applications are due by 6:00 a.m. (EDT) on Monday, May 5th.

• Our team emphasizes key recommendations and biodefense analysis included in the final report published by the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology, following the multi-year work mandated by the US Congress.

• Christine Parthemore and John Moulton analyzed the biological threat findings of the 2025 annual US Intelligence Community threat assessment.

• Our experts provided biodefense recommendations for the Trump Administration.

• Our team contextualized the status of the Biological Weapons Convention following the December 2025 Meeting of States Parties.

Centre for Long-Term Resilience

The Biosecurity Policy Unit at the Centre for Long-Term Resilience (CLTR) works closely with the UK Government and other stakeholders to reduce extreme biological risks.

• In February, we published a new report on how to simultaneously grow the UK bioeconomy while addressing national security goals against biological threats.

• We conducted a UK national poll in collaboration with Public First about public attitudes towards extreme risks, which found a large majority of the British population believes that biological risks are rising and pandemic preparedness should be a top priority for the UK government.

• In March, we published a new report with recommendations on how to boost the UK's supply chain resilience to mitigate catastrophic biological risks. This was covered in UK news and BBC radio.

• In April, we published a perspective piece on why biosecurity must not become a casualty of the trade war.

Blueprint Biosecurity

Blueprint Biosecurity is a nonprofit dedicated to achieving breakthroughs in humanity’s ability to prevent, mitigate, and suppress pandemics.

• We published the first release of our report, Blueprint for Far-UVC. In addition to serving as a comprehensive educational resource, it offers actionable recommendations for speeding up far-UVC's development.

• We published a piece in Works in Progress about far-UVC’s scaling challenges.

• Project AIR is our new research initiative aimed at implementing the recommendations from the far-UVC Blueprint. It will include the first large-scale randomized control trial for establishing far-UVC's real-world effectiveness, along with safety studies and improved usage guidelines.

• We launched a new substack where we will be writing about progress across the far-UVC field.

• We launched our DEMIST RFP—up to $150k per team to study how airborne TB responds to far-UVC light. Learn more and apply by 4/28 here.

• We facilitated the closing panel at the NIST workshop on germicidal UV.

• Our PPE team is investigating strategies to quickly manufacture reusable respirators in a crisis.

Biosecurity and Pandemic Policy Center, Scowcroft Institute

The Biosecurity and Pandemic Policy Center, at the Texas A&M Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs, conducts policy-oriented research dedicated to promoting a world safe, secure, and resilient against existential biological threats.

• In March, we hosted the 2025 Scowcroft Institute Pandemic Summit in Washington, DC. The summit was a day-long discussion of the present H5N1 influenza outbreak, with a focus on the implications of ongoing infections in cattle and the agricultural sector at large. A summary report of takeaways will be published in the near future. For a shorter overview, please see this post that appeared in the Pandora Report, by the GMU Biodefense Program.

• We are excited to see that the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology's final report section 4.4 cites our white paper proposing an independent federal bioresponsibility authority, among related calls for such an authority, and lays out a similar vision.

• We joined the Brown Pandemic Center on a preprint article discussing policy levers for state and federal government bodies to improve indoor air quality now available on SSRN.

Asia Centre for Health Security

The Asia Centre for Health Security (ACHS) (newsletter) is a new academic think tank, set-up to strengthen Asia’s readiness for biological threats through scientific evidence, building of expertise and capabilities, and the forging of strategic partnerships. Our vision is a united and resilient Asia safeguarded against health security threats for the well-being of future generations.

• The Asia Centre for Health Security (ACHS) is pleased to present the Global Health Security Law (GHSL) course in collaboration with the Centre for International Law at the National University of Singapore. This course offers a comprehensive overview of the legal frameworks governing global health security– the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Health Regulations (IHR) and the Pandemic Treaty, Human Rights During Public Health Emergencies, Access and Benefit Sharing, Access to Medicines During Outbreaks and One Health. Join us from 11 – 13 June 2025, 14:00 – 17:30 (GMT+08:00) to learn from renowned experts in the field. Register for the Global Health Security Law Course here.

• The Asia Centre for Health Security celebrated its first year anniversary in April 2025. This milestone marks a year of growth and collaboration in advancing health security across Asia. Reflecting on our journey, we've built more than just an academic think tank – we’ve created a community committed to strengthening health systems and moving closer to our vision of an Asia better prepared for both current and emerging biological threats. Over the past year, we've launched the ACHS Fellowship Program, convened regional meetings, and initiated impactful research that could lead to improving policies and practices. To commemorate this milestone, we’ve curated a special anniversary page on the ACHS website, showcasing key achievements, and offering an insightful view of the strides we’ve made in our first year.

1DaySooner

1Day Sooner (news) is a nonprofit organization that advocates for high-impact medical studies and the efficient development and deployment of life-saving medical research and public health interventions.

• Three new papers conducted or funded by 1DaySooner:

  • Biosecurity considerations of controlled human infection model studies examines three biosecurity risk areas for controlled human infection studies: onward pathogen transmission, information hazards, and challenge agent manufacturing risks, proposing mitigations to enhance biosecurity without sacrificing medical advances.

  • An analysis of controlled human infection studies registered on ClinicalTrials.gov hypothesizes that adverse event data may be more easily aggregated using a clinical trial registry like ClinicalTrials.gov.

  • Cost-effectiveness of malaria interventions: a systematic review: 1Day Africa’s research team reviewed studies evaluating the cost-effectiveness of malaria prevention interventions, including vaccines, vector control, insecticide-treated bed nets, and chemoprevention.

• We provided a public comment on the development of an AI action plan from the Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP). Our recommendations include establishing an AI Corps within HHS to accelerate integration of AI across its agencies and strengthening the FDA’s regulatory capacity through AI.

Opportunities

Jobs

You can find additional biosecurity and pandemic preparedness jobs on the 80,000 Hours job board.

• 1DaySooner: is hiring a Volunteer Coordinator, who will support participants across all phases of study involvement, develop and execute targeted outreach strategies, collaborate closely with study teams and community organizations, and advocate for participant perspectives.

• Blueprint Biosecurity: Researcher / Senior Researcher (Remote, FT, hiring multiple positions) to translate academic and industry research into actionable plans to prevent and suppress future pandemics.

• CLTR: We are looking to hire a Strategic Partnerships and Philanthropy Lead to take our fundraising activity to the next level.

• EU HERA: is hiring a Policy officer - Medical Counter Measures innovation and access, deadline to apply April 25.

• Panoplia Labs: We’re hiring for research associates and an operations lead to help us run the uplift study.

• The Mirror Biology Dialogues Fund is looking to hire an Event Operations Contractor and a Technical Contractor for approximately two months in May-June 2025.

Other opportunities

• CSR’s International Mid-Career Biosecurity Fellowship: A new fellowship for citizens of NATO states (+ official Indo-Pacific partners). Apply by May 5.

• CEPI’s Global South Fellowship Program: Four positions for individuals from Global South countries to contribute to global pandemic preparedness. Apply by April 17. (h/t to SEA Bio)

• The Ninth Annual Next Generation for Biosecurity Competition has been launched. Find a team now to submit your project by July 13, 2025.

We regularly solicit updates from a group of organizations that we believe are doing impactful work to reduce GCBRs in order to improve transparency, facilitate collaboration, and otherwise accelerate progress in our community. Do you have any opportunities (jobs, events, etc.) you would like to share with our network? Please use this form to submit them.

Did you find this newsletter helpful? Do you have ideas on how we could improve it? Please fill out this brief feedback form or email hello@tessa.fyi.

Cover image credit: Wellcome Collection.

• The launch of the Bio Funders Compact;

• A database of national implementation measures for the BWC;

• Virology troubleshooting and non-interactive assessments to evaluate AI-Bio;

• A report on mirror life;

• Publications on challenge trials, viral prospecting, and regulatory authority to oversee pathogen research;

• And more!

Subscribe now

1Day Sooner

1Day Sooner (news) is a nonprofit organization that advocates for high-impact medical studies and the efficient development and deployment of life-saving medical research and public health interventions.

• 1Day convened 80+ of the nation’s top health, biosecurity, and research leaders for our third annual Operation Warp Speed 2.0 conference. This year’s theme, “Applying Pull Funding & Regulatory Capacity to Advance New Biotechnologies & Prevent Pandemics,” aimed to share proposals and activate change in replicating the elements that made Operation Warp Speed (OWS) successful and build support for vaccine development and pandemic preparedness. Read the recap of the event.

• “Avoiding Another Lost Decade on Malaria Vaccines”: Co-authored with the Center for Global Development, this paper recommends how to execute an ambitious malaria vaccine rollout. A blog post recapping the paper’s top takeaways is also available.

• “Unblocking Human Challenge Trials for Faster Progress”: Part of the Institute for Progress’s (IFP) Clinical Trials Abundance project, this paper explores how to more broadly utilize human challenge trials by removing common barriers in the U.S.

Asia Centre for Health Security

The Asia Centre for Health Security (ACHS) (newsletter) is a new academic think tank, set up to strengthen Asia’s readiness for biological threats through scientific evidence, building of expertise and capabilities, and the forging of strategic partnerships. Our vision is a united and resilient Asia safeguarded against health security threats for the well-being of future generations.

• The Asia Centre for Health Security (ACHS) Webinar Series is a quarterly webinar that discusses and shares innovative developments in health security in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond. It will feature a diverse group of experts, including leading academics and biosafety and biosecurity professionals. Learn more about the ACHS Webinar Series by visiting our website.

• Join the inaugural ACHS webinar titled, “How to Avoid Human-Made Pandemics” on 23 Jan at 8 PM (GMT +08:00), presented by Dr Filippa Lentzos from King’s College London. Registration closes on 22 Jan 2025, 5pm (GMT+8:00): https://for.sg/achswebinar-1

• We are thrilled to introduce the inaugural 2025 cohort of the ACHS Fellowship Program! This highly competitive program has brought together exceptional graduate students and professionals from across the globe, all united by their dedication to advancing health security efforts across Asia! Learn more about the ACHS Fellowship Program and the 2025 fellows here.

Blueprint Biosecurity

Blueprint Biosecurity is a nonprofit dedicated to achieving breakthroughs in humanity’s ability to prevent, mitigate, and suppress pandemics.

• Alongside Michael Friedman from the Asia Center for Health Security, we hosted a successful PPE workshop in Singapore. This was an opportunity for PPE stakeholders across Southeast Asia to discuss findings from our Next-Gen PPE Blueprint. Here’s what some attendees had to say.

• In the upcoming year our PPE team aims to expand our policy advocacy work by focusing on the stockpiling of elastomeric respirators. To achieve that goal, we recently hired a Senior Policy Advisor, Adam Goff.

• Our far-UVC team hosted a well-received workshop in Washington, D.C. in October. 25 leaders from government and academia discussed building evidence around far-UVC’s safety and efficacy.

• James Montavan from our far-UVC team presented at both AAAR and CBD S&T conferences.

• We’ve begun a deeper investigation into glycol vapors for transmission suppression. Reach out to our transmission suppression lead, Aman Patel, to learn more.

Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

The Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics (CCDD) (newsletter) at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health focuses on improving methods for infectious disease modeling and statistical analysis, reducing biosecurity risks, engaging with policymakers to enhance decision-making, and training the next generation of scientists.

• CCDD’s Director, Prof. Marc Lipsitch joined the NTI | bio and Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) working group to develop implementation guidance for the international Bio Funders Compact.

• Lipsitch has provided expertise to Legal Advocates for Safe Science and Technology to prepare an amicus curiae brief related to a court case involving the scope of legal liability for unsafe pathogen research.

• CCDD has submitted two preprints on the utility of viral prospecting and the challenges of predicting pandemics from a limited training set.

Centre for Long-Term Resilience

The Biosecurity Policy Unit at the Centre for Long-Term Resilience (CLTR) works closely with the UK Government and other stakeholders to reduce extreme biological risks.

• We submitted written evidence to the UK Government's Strategic Defence Review and Industrial Strategy open consultation, highlighting the need to scale and resource counter-CBRN capabilities and strategically invest in the life sciences sector.

• We participated in the EU AI Act Code of Practice Working Groups and conducted an analysis of whether biological foundation models and other AI-enabled biological tools may be subject to regulation under the Act.

• We submitted written evidence to the US National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Safety Considerations for Chemical and Biological AI Models, highlighting the role of non-interactive risk assessments.

• We furthered conversations on AI biological threats and biodefense through participation in the Frontier AI Safety Framework Conference in California, the CBD S&T Conference in Florida and the first UK Microbial Forensics Consortium in London.

Council on Strategic Risks

The Council on Strategic Risks (CSR) is a nonprofit, non-partisan security policy institute devoted to anticipating, analyzing and addressing core systemic risks to security in the 21st century, with special examination of the ways in which these risks intersect and exacerbate one another.

• With several areas of sustained positive actions across pathogen early warning, multilateral cooperation, and biomanufacturing by the US government in recent months, our team published details on these important areas of progress in our update of the CSR Biodefense Scorecard.

• Traveling to Seoul and Tokyo in November, CSR’s Global Biosecurity Accelerator convened dialogues with experts from the Republic of Korea, Japan, the United States, United Kingdom, and NATO to advance recommendations for biosecurity strategies for East Asia.

• On December 10th, we hosted our first CSR-wide symposium, Resilience in the Face of Global Risks, bringing together leaders for engaging scenario exercises and focused strategy sessions. We also launched the CSR Membership, which will serve as another platform for directly sharing info and community-building on bio and other global-risk issues.

IBBIS

The International Biosecurity and Biosafety Initiative for Science (IBBIS) (news) is a Geneva-based nonprofit that works collaboratively with global partners to strengthen biosecurity norms and develop innovative tools to uphold them.

• IBBIS will soon open hiring for several Geneva-based roles: a Deputy Director, Program Manager, and Operations Lead. Contact info@ibbis.bio if you or someone you know would be a good fit!

• We're starting a project to create a global map of synthesis providers and policies governing nucleic acids. Get in touch with mayra@ibbis.bio if you're interested in using this map (so we can tailor our data collection to be practically useful) or in partnering to co-produce it!

• As part of the IGSC Sequence Biosecurity Risk Consortium, we are seeking collaborators with expertise in pathogen genomics, export controls, or other aspects of defining sequences of concern.

• New preprint: Toward AI-Resilient Screening of Nucleic Acid Synthesis Orders

• We presented at the BWC MSP (slides), iGEM Responsibility Conference (slides, video), and Global Biofoundries Alliance meeting. Find IBBIS will be at the IFBA Global Voices Conference (Tanzania), AI Action Summit (France), Munich Security Conference (Germany), and Bio-iSAC Cyberbiosecurity Summit (USA).

International Gene Synthesis Consortium

The International Gene Synthesis Consortium (IGSC) is an industry-led group of gene synthesis companies and organizations formed to design and apply a common protocol to screen both the sequences of synthetic gene orders and the customers who place them.

• Several IGSC member companies along with Microsoft published a preprint on AI-resilient nucleic acid synthesis screening.

Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security

The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security explores how new policy approaches, scientific advances and technological innovations can improve organizations, systems, policies and tools to prevent and respond to pandemics and biological threats.

• CHS selected 31 incredible professionals for the 2025 Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity Initiative (ELBI). Now in its 12th year, ELBI is thrilled to welcome this incredibly accomplished and diverse class of fellows selected from over 300 applicants.

• CHS continues to actively contribute expert insights on AI and biosecurity policy, including recent responses to the requests for information from the US AISI and DOE.

• We are excited to bring together global leaders to address pressing issues at the crucial convergence of national policy, biosecurity, and artificial intelligence during our side events at the upcoming AI Action Summit in Paris and the 2025 Munich Security Conference.

NTI | bio

The NTI | bio program works to identify gaps and promote lasting systemic change to improve biotechnology governance, strengthen biosecurity and pandemic preparedness, and reduce global catastrophic biological risks.

• In October, NTI | bio and CEPI convened the inaugural Bio Funders Forum, a venue for funders of life science research to share best practices and discuss challenges and opportunities for embedding biosafety and biosecurity into their work as a way to incentivize responsible innovation.

• NTI | bio launched a new report in November, Developing Guardrails for AI Biodesign Tools, which outlines several measures that could be deployed to reduce the risks associated with biodesign tool development and release.

• At the Biological Weapons Convention in December, NTI | bio launched Disincentivizing Bioweapons: Theory and Policy Approaches, an essay collection that bridges theory and practice to invigorate international efforts to reduce biological threats posed by state actors.

• Also at the BWC, NTI | bio hosted a side event that underscored how enhanced transparency can reduce the risk of misperceptions among states about bioscience and biotechnology research and development, avoiding arms-racing behavior.

Open Philanthropy

Open Philanthropy’s Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness team supports efforts to strengthen disease surveillance, the governance of dual-use research, policy development, and other activities that could reduce the threat of a major global disruption.

• Alongside the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and Patrick Collison, we funded work culminating in a Science article and accompanying technical report intended to initiate a global scientific dialogue about the potential risks posed by mirror life (news article). In tandem, helped launch the Mirror Biology Dialogues Fund (MBDF) to support ongoing discussions. MBDF is currently hiring for operations and technical roles at all levels of seniority, reach out to jobs@mbdf.org for more information.

• Awarded a three-year grant supporting the Council on Strategic Risks’ work running biosecurity fellowships and advancing biodefense policy in the US and globally.

• Supported Blueprint Biosecurity in their mission of accelerating progress toward effective countermeasures against pandemics.

• In 2024, provided ~$1.4m in career development funding for individuals, primarily through OP’s Career Development and Transition Funding program. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis.

SecureBio

SecureBio is a nonprofit research organization working on new technologies and policy proposals to delay, detect, and defend against catastrophic pandemics.

• The NAO has begun a collaboration with PHC Global on their ANTI-DOTE contract. For the next 36 weeks the team will perform weekly deep metagenomic sequencing on two marine blackwater samples and analyze them for novel pathogens.

• The AI team's expert-level virology troubleshooting evaluation was used to assess ChatGPT o1 and featured in the system card accompanying the release.

• SecureDNA has achieved significant performance enhancements in its screening infrastructure, with testing demonstrating speeds exceeding 65,000bp/s for high-volume synthesis operations. This configuration enables processing of 40 million base pairs in under 10 minutes for organizations with exceptional throughput requirements.

Sentinel Bio

Sentinel Bio is a new non-profit philanthropic fund that supports efforts to eliminate pandemic risks.

• We supported and launched new collaborations with the Council on Strategic Risks, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, University of Maryland, and Asia Centre for Health Security.

• We launched our new website, featuring an overview of our strategy, current projects, and partners.

• We’re welcoming Janika Schmitt as the third member of our team; Janika will assume a leading role in our work on technological countermeasures for pandemic preparedness

• In the coming months, we expect to participate in the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris and the Munich Security Conference – come say hi if you’re there!

Biosecurity and Pandemic Policy Center, Scowcroft Institute

The Biosecurity and Pandemic Policy Center, at the Texas A&M Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs, conducts policy-oriented research dedicated to promoting a world safe, secure, and resilient against existential biological threats.

• We published Envisioning an Independent Bioresponsibility Authority to Safeguard U.S. Leadership in the Life Sciences, a detailed proposal for an independent federal agency to oversee pathogen research conducted in the United States or funded by the U.S. government. Taking a more comprehensive and collaborative approach, the proposed agency would pair expanded regulatory oversight with technical assistance, non-punitive incident reporting, funding for biosafety and biosecurity research, and education and training efforts. It would consolidate and streamline requirements and remain flexible as technology advances. This report is informed by several months of stakeholder engagement and feedback and the authors’ experiences with high containment laboratories and federal agencies.

• In Applied Biosafety, authors Ben Snyder, Josh Wentzel, Gerry Parker, Jerry Epstein, and Robert Kadlec published Trust, but Verify: A “Just Culture” Model for Oversight of Potentially High-Risk Life Sciences Research.

• We co-hosted the third Operation Warp Speed 2.0 Conference with 1Day Sooner in December.

UNIDIR

The United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) is an autonomous institution within the United Nations that conducts independent research on pressing global challenges related to disarmament, arms control and international security.

• Exciting Update: The BWC NIM Database Is Complete!

  • The BWC National Implementation Measures Database developed by UNIDIR and VERTIC has reached a significant milestone: profiles for all 187 States Parties to the BWC are now live! This comprehensive online tool provides detailed insights into each country’s national implementation measures under the BWC, supporting transparency and international cooperation.

  • All profiles are available in English, and the team will continue to work on translating them into all official UN languages throughout 2025. Updates to the profiles will also be made regularly to ensure they remain accurate and relevant.

  • Explore the database at bwcimplementation.org.

Jobs, events, and other opportunities

You can find additional biosecurity and pandemic preparedness jobs on the 80,000 Hours job board.

• Jobs

  • CSR is hiring a Biosecurity-AI Fellow to monitor, inform, and influence policy in this area.

  • Founder’s Pledge is hiring an Applied Researcher - Global Catastrophic Risks and welcomes applicants with biosecurity backgrounds.

  • Blueprint Biosecurity is hiring for an Executive Assistant. The job can be Remote, with preference for candidates in Washington, D.C., and requires a minimum of 5 years of administrative experience, with a preference for 2 or more years of executive support experience.

  • Those interested in the intersection of AI and Biosecurity may be interested in Renan Araujo’s weekly curation of AI policy job opportunities (one recent post).

• Other

  • Applications for a new Biosecurity Forecasting Initiative from the Oxford Biosecurity Group are open until February 3.

  • biosecurity.world features a curated map of biosecurity organizations.

  • For updates on Southeast Asia Biosecurity, you can check out their new monthly newsletter.

  • Numerous fellowships and other opportunities can be found on the (US-focused) Emerging Tech Policy Careers site (see their biosecurity profile).

  • New cohorts of biosecurity fellows were announced as part of the Asia Center for Health Security fellowship, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security ELBI Fellowship, Council on Strategic Risks Ending Bioweapons Fellowship, and Brown University Pandemic Center Game Changers Fellowship. Congrats to all the new fellows!

Subscribe now

We regularly solicit updates from a group of organizations that we believe are doing impactful work to reduce GCBRs in order to improve transparency, facilitate collaboration, and otherwise accelerate progress in our community.

Do you have any opportunities (jobs, events, etc.) you would like to share with our network? Please use this form to submit them.

Did you find this newsletter helpful? Do you have ideas on how we could improve it? Please fill out this brief feedback form or email hello@tessa.fyi.

Cover image credit: Lectures on Ventilation (1869), Lewis W. Leeds, Public Domain Review.

• AI-Bio: multimodal virology benchmark, report on prioritization of biological capabilities of concern, risk index for AI-enabled biological tools

• Nucleic acid synthesis: compliance information for the new US framework, exemption certificates, customer screening, new grants on nucleic acid governance

• Pandemic prevention: a wikipedia page and path forward on far-UVC, a biomanufacturing plan for future biothreats, day zero antivirals for future pandemics

• Three new organizations added: the Harvard Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics, the Asia Center for Health Security, and Panoplia Laboratories

• And more!

Subscribe now

SecureBio

SecureBio is a nonprofit research organization working on new technologies and policy proposals to delay, detect, and defend against catastrophic pandemics.

• The Nucleic Acid Observatory is expanding its wastewater sequencing to additional metropolitan sewersheds and will advance nasal swab efforts by sampling on the MIT campus. Lastly, the NAO's genetic engineering detection pipeline is now operational.

• The AI team has developed an expert-validated benchmark for assessing troubleshooting capabilities in virology. The multimodal benchmark includes 350 questions, incorporating original micrographs and photos, and was created with contributions from 60 expert virologists, making it challenging even for experienced professionals. The team plans to share this tool with safety teams, regulatory bodies, and academic researchers focused on AIxBio safety.

• SecureDNA has developed an Exemption Certification System to streamline the approval process for legitimate synthesis orders. SecureDNA also published a compliance guide to the OSTP screening framework that comes into force in October. Lastly, SecureDNA participated in the ERBC/NIST workshop on "Enabling Quality, Measurable Synthetic DNA Sequence Screening".

Sentinel Bio

Sentinel Bio is a new non-profit philanthropic fund that supports efforts to eliminate pandemic risks.

• We have launched a handful of new efforts within our focus on strengthening the quality and prevalence of safeguards on advanced biotechnologies:

• Nucleic Acid Governance

  • A $330,000 grant to the Engineering Biology Research Consortium to support stress-testing of synthesis screening systems.

  • A $150,000 grant to the Pandemic Action Network to support a roadmap for nucleic acid governance policy in the EU.

  • A $75,000 grant to Nikki Teran to explore ways to certify legitimate life scientists for accessing dual-use materials & tools.

• AI-Bio

  • An $80,000 grant to Epoch AI to track the release of new AI-bio models and their biosecurity safeguards.

• Our team will be in Singapore in December for a workshop on PPE for pandemic prevention and to visit the Asia Centre for Health Security.

Panoplia labs

Panoplia Laboratories is a nonprofit organization developing broad-spectrum antivirals that can be immediately deployed at the beginning of the next pandemic.

• Executive Director Brian Wang published the piece “Day Zero Antivirals for Future Pandemics” in Asimov Press, highlighting new broad-spectrum antiviral technologies that could be deployed on day zero of the next pandemic.

• We developed the capacity to carry out animal studies in-house and conducted our first pilot animal studies to test some of our broad-spectrum antiviral candidates against influenza.

• We’re continuing to design and build new candidates, develop and validate new assays for testing those candidates in cell culture, and expand our in-house animal study capabilities.

IBBIS

IBBIS (news) is a Geneva-based nonprofit that works collaboratively with global partners to strengthen biosecurity norms and develop innovative tools to uphold them.

• IBBIS has developed resources to support customer screening, including personas of legitimate (and illegitimate!) customers for nucleic acid synthesis, forms to support standardized information-collection, and a decision framework for synthesis providers. The customer personas, as presented at the September ERBC/NIST synthesis screening workshop, are now here: https://ibbis.bio/personas-for-follow-up-screening/

• In September, IBBIS hosted a meeting on “Safeguarding the Responsible Transition to a Biobased Economy”, in collaboration with CEPI and WEF. The event gathered 35 industry leaders and innovators from around the world to explore collaborative opportunities for promoting biosecurity.

• Find IBBIS at the Global Biofoundries Alliance Meeting (Oct 10-12), iGEM Responsibility Conference (Oct 23-24), ABSA Biosecurity and Biosafety Conference (Nov 1-6), Paris Peace Forum (Nov 11-12), and BWC Meeting of States Parties (Dec).

Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security

The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security (CHS) (newsletter) explores how new policy approaches, scientific advances and technological innovations can improve organizations, systems, policies and tools to prevent and respond to pandemics and biological threats.

• CHS launched the Gene Synthesis Screening Information Hub to assist with compliance to recent US policy and share information with the international community, all in one place.

• CHS continues to provide expertise on the topic of the intersection of AI and biosecurity, including in the US AISI, OECD, and EU AI Office. NIST adopted our two main recommendations for its Generative AI Risk Management Profile and NTIA cited our comment in its report on Dual-Use Foundation Models with Widely Available Model Weights.

• We presented our Prioritization of AI-Enabled Biological Capabilities of Concern work to the US AI Safety Institute Consortium, of which we have been an active member. CHS leadership began serving as members of the Code of Practice Plenary, which will facilitate the proper application of the EU AI Act's rules for general-purpose AI models, including systemic risk taxonomy, risk assessment, and mitigation measures.

Council on Strategic Risks

The Council on Strategic Risks (CSR) is a nonprofit, non-partisan security policy institute devoted to anticipating, analyzing and addressing core systemic risks to security in the 21st century, with special examination of the ways in which these risks intersect and exacerbate one another.

• In November, the Global Biosecurity Accelerator will host discrete multilateral discussions in Seoul and Tokyo as part of our concerted effort to enshrine deterrence by denial for biodefense in allies’ national strategies and plans.

• In September we published our report, A Biomanufacturing Plan to Confront Future Biological Threats, that built upon the expert panel cohosted with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

• For our analysis of progress towards strengthening the Biological Weapons Convention, read our latest blog post recapping the working group meeting in Geneva this August.

• The next cohort of our Mid-Career Biodefense Bootcamp was announced in late August, and in September, we held enriching dialogues with officials in the Executive Office of the President, Departments of State and Defense, and past biodefense leaders. CSR has a rolling call for applicants for its future cohorts.

• Our Fiscal Year 2025 Update to the CSR Biodefense Budget Breakdown went live in July.

Centre for Long-Term Resilience

The Biosecurity Policy Unit at the Centre for Long-Term Resilience (CLTR) works closely with the UK Government and other stakeholders to reduce extreme biological risks.

• In July we published a report examining the near-term impact of AI on biological misuse, assessing the potential for current uplift from large language model access and the impact of forecasted trends over the next two years

• In August we published a tracker independently assessing UK progress on the commitments listed in the Biological Security Strategy and collaborated on a response to the COVID-19 Inquiry Module 1 Report

• We have commenced a collaboration with RAND and RAND Europe to create a new risk index for AI-enabled biological tools

• We are excited to announce the addition of two new team members, Oliver Payne and Paul-Enguerrand Fady, who joined our biosecurity policy unit this September

Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

The Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics (CCDD) at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health focuses on improving methods for infectious disease modeling and statistical analysis, reducing biosecurity risks, engaging with policymakers to enhance decision-making, and training the next generation of scientists. 

• In July, CCDD Director Prof. Marc Lipsitch and co-authors published an op-ed, “How to Reduce the Risk of a Catastrophic Lab Accident”, discussing the merits of the U.S. government’s new policy on risky pathogen research and how it can be improved.

• Lipsitch co-chairs a working group of the WHO Technical Advisory Group on Dual Use Research - Responsible Use of Life Sciences (TAG DUR-RULS). The group provides recommendations to WHO on scientific, technical, and strategic issues related to monitoring and mitigating biorisks.

Blueprint Biosecurity

Blueprint Biosecurity is a nonprofit dedicated to achieving breakthroughs in humanity’s ability to prevent, mitigate, and suppress pandemics.

• We’re facilitating a workshop to share the first draft of recommendations from our far-UVC blueprint. 25 leaders from government and academia will be gathering in Washington, D.C. to discuss the best path forward for gathering crucial evidence around far-UVC’s safety and efficacy.

• We created the wikipedia page for far-UVC.

• Our far-UVC team presented at the American Association for Aerosol Research annual conference.

• Alongside colleagues at the Asia Center for Health Security, we’re hosting a PPE workshop in Singapore in December. The workshop will convene a group of advocates, researchers, manufacturers, and national stockpile decision makers to discuss the state of PPE across Southeast Asia.

• We are continuing to investigate glycol vapors for their potential as an air disinfectant. We'll be releasing a shallow dive writeup soon.

• Our tenth hire was made — a Communications Lead.

Asia Centre for Health Security

The Asia Centre for Health Security (ACHS) (newsletter) is a new academic think tank, set-up to strengthen Asia’s readiness for biological threats through scientific evidence, building of expertise and capabilities, and the forging of strategic partnerships. Our vision is a united and resilient Asia safeguarded against health security threats for the well-being of future generations.

• The Asia Centre for Health Security has recently launched their website. Visit https://www.asia-chs.org to learn more about their research in biorisk management, biosecurity and international security, law and governance, and preparedness and response systems; education and training initiatives; meetings; and resources.

• The inaugural 12-month ACHS Fellowship Program was launched in October 2024, to inspire and connect emerging biosecurity innovators.

• Applications for the ACHS Fellowship 2025 close on 3 Nov 2024, 5pm (GMT+8:00). Visit https://asia-chs.org/fellowship-programme/achs-fellowship-program-2025 for more details.

Jobs, events, and other opportunities  

You can find additional biosecurity and pandemic preparedness jobs on the 80,000 Hours job board.

• The Nuclear Threat Initiative’s is looking for interns for their Global Biological Policy and Programs. You can apply here by Tuesday October 15, 2024.

• Applications for the Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity (ELBI) Fellowship at the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins are open until October 16, 2024.

• Applications for the ACHS Fellowship 2025 close on 3 Nov 2024, 5pm (GMT+8:00). Visit https://asia-chs.org/fellowship-programme/achs-fellowship-program-2025 for more details. 

• Applications are now open for the 2025-26 Academic Year for the following opportunities at the Bloomberg School of Public Health:

  • 1) full-time, in-person Health Security PhD track, a program focusing on GCBRs;

  • 2) Health Security Scholarship to support DrPH students in dissertation research on a GCBR-related topic.

• Upcoming conferences include: AI 4 Synbio Synthesis Screening Workshop (October 9), iGEM Jamboree and Responsibility Conference (October 23-26), ABSA International Biosafety and Biosecurity Conference (November 1-6).

• The US AI Safety Institute has a Request for Comment on Safety Considerations for Chemical and/or Biological AI Models open until December 3, 2024.

• SecureBio and Ginkgo Bioworks, Inc. are hosting a biosecurity happy hour on Thursday, October 24, from 6-8 pm in Boston. You can RSVP here: https://lnkd.in/eT7AwgiF

• Asimov Press published a mini-issue on pandemic prevention, featuring articles on historical pandemic death statistics, DNA synthesis screening, broad-spectrum antivirals, and global biosurveillance.

• We (Tessa and Anemone) just published an article on information hazards in collaboration with 80,000 Hours. This article is part of our anonymous answers series with Part One: Misconceptions and Part Two: Fighting pandemics.

We regularly solicit updates from a group of organizations that we believe are doing impactful work to reduce GCBRs in order to improve transparency, facilitate collaboration, and otherwise accelerate progress in our community.

Do you have any opportunities (jobs, events, etc.) you would like to share with our network? Please use this form to submit them.

Did you find this newsletter helpful? Do you have ideas on how we could improve it? Please fill out this brief feedback form or email hello@tessa.fyi.

Cover image credit: The National Library of Medicine, http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/101447529

• The launch of Sentinel Bio;

• A report on making the UK a global leader in human challenge studies;

• The launch of the Global Biosecurity Accelerator;

• The Common Mechanism DNA synthesis screening tool is available for public use;

• And more!

After trialing a bi-monthly schedule, we are now returning to quarterly updates to accommodate our collaborators’ preferences better.

1Day Sooner

1Day Sooner is a nonprofit organization that advocates for high-impact medical studies and the efficient development and deployment of life-saving medical research and public health interventions.

• In March, the WHO released draft guidelines on the potential use of human challenge studies in response to emerging public health threats. In April, 1Day Sooner hosted an unofficial symposium with drafters of the guidelines, experts in public health, bioethics, and and infectious disease, and former human challenge participants. You can read notes from the symposium here.

• 1Day Sooner coordinated expert feedback on and advocated for revisions to California's SB 1308, intended to reduce indoor ozone pollution. We were concerned that the bill as written could have inadvertently banned germicidal UV light-based air cleaning technology. The bill was withdrawn in late June.

• We published a report on making the UK a global leader in human challenge studies with the UK Day One Project.

Blueprint Biosecurity

Blueprint Biosecurity is a nonprofit dedicated to achieving breakthroughs in humanity’s ability to prevent, mitigate, and suppress pandemics.

• In partnership with Gryphon Scientific, we’ve just published our Blueprint on Pandemic-Proof PPE. We offer recommendations for ensuring that vital workers will have the PPE they need to perform their jobs safely during a pandemic. 

• We are starting to plan international workshops and engagement on next-gen PPE. If your work is relevant to the PPE ecosystem and would like a briefing on the report, reach out to us at info@blueprintbiosecurity.org. 

• Our far-UVC team presented at the International Ultraviolet Association (IUVA) Americas Meeting and presented and held a workshop at the International Congress on Far-UVC Science and Technology (ICFUST). We’re also sponsoring and presenting at Indoor Air 24.

• We’re continuing our work on built environment transmission suppression and beginning writeups on triethylene glycol and portable air cleaners.

• We continue to grow with two new hires, including a Program Director for our PPE focus area.

Convergent Research

Convergent Research launches Focused Research Organizations (FROs) to tackle large-scale, tightly coordinated, non-profit projects. Their biosecurity team is investigating FROs to reduce risks from pandemics.

• Last year, Convergent Research roadmapping analysis convened a workshop with top experts on solid-state UV emitters to scope out the most promising approaches in far-UVC emitter development, forecast timelines with respect to relevant milestones, and list priorities for R&D and broader ecosystem support. The results are summarized in the workshop report.

Council on Strategic Risks

The Council on Strategic Risks (CSR) is a nonprofit, non-partisan security policy institute devoted to anticipating, analyzing and addressing core systemic risks to security in the 21st century, with special examination of the ways in which these risks intersect and exacerbate one another.

• At NATO’s 75th Anniversary Summit in July, CSR will cohost a discussion on fortifying global biosecurity in the face of high-tech threats as part of the Foreign Policy Security Forum.

• In early July, CSR announced the members of the 2024–2025 Fellowship for Ending Bioweapons, the program’s fifth cohort.

• In June, CSR launched the Global Biosecurity Accelerator at the Helsinki Biosecurity Dialogue co-hosted by the Finnish government. The initiative will serve as a force multiplier dedicated to improving global resilience to biological threats by convening key leaders, and sharing ideas and lessons to support and promote strong bio policies and programs across the world. 

• In May, we published an update to our Biodefense Scorecard. This update detailed the undesirable action regarding the Department of Energy’s Bioassurance program while highlighting the recent progress on expanded diplomacy on pathogen early warning.

Ginkgo Biosecurity

Ginkgo Biosecurity is building and deploying the next-generation infrastructure and technologies that global leaders need to predict, detect, and respond to a wide variety of biological threats.

• We hosted our annual Ferment conference in April -- you can explore our biosecurity products and learn about global biosecurity in practice from Drs. Nikki Romanik, Cindy Friedman, and Wilmot James.

• We and our collaborators at Northeastern University were awarded a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to build an open-access, AI-enabled measles forecasting model to empower proactive public health measures, such as immunization campaigns.

• We announced plans to launch CUBE-D, a new Doha-based hub for pathogen monitoring in the Middle East and beyond.

• We've discussed our work and the future of biosecurity technology on the Burn Bag podcast and the Dynamist podcast.

• Our head of Epidemiology & Modeling, Nita Madhav, took the stage at Devex CheckUp @ WHA77 to discuss innovation for health equity.

IBBIS

IBBIS is a Geneva-based nonprofit that works collaboratively with global partners to strengthen biosecurity norms and develop innovative tools to uphold them.

• IBBIS launched the Common Mechanism, our open-source, globally available tool for DNA synthesis screening, at SynBioBeta in May. Anyone can now get started with the sequence screening tool.

• We recently joined the International Gene Synthesis Consortium and have been participating in the ongoing EBRC-NIST workshops to develop tools and mechanisms for screening performance evaluation.

• We published several papers in the Applied Biosafety special issue on Synthetic Genomics, including Progress and Prospects for a Nucleic Acid Screening Test Set, Developing a Common Global Baseline for Nucleic Acid Synthesis Screening, and Five Things Not to Do When Discovering a Biosecurity Vulnerability.

SecureBio

SecureBio is a nonprofit research organization working on new technologies and policy proposals to delay, detect, and defend against catastrophic pandemics.

• The Nucleic Acid Observatory team is sequencing and analyzing wastewater samples from a major US airport and wastewater treatment plant; collaborating with prominent virology labs to generate large volumes of wastewater sequencing data from other cities; and launching an effort to collect and sequence pooled nasal swab samples. More updates here.

• The AI team—now led by Seth Donoughe—is partnering with regulators and frontier model developers to de-risk forthcoming AI model releases against severe biological hazards. We also collaborated with the Center for AI Safety to develop a benchmark that assessed non-hazardous scientific information that could serve as a proxy for hazardous material. 

• SecureDNA is finalizing a new exemption list feature that allows biosafety authorities to issue exemptions for approved DNA synthesis orders. They are seeking feedback from labs, biosafety officers and DNA synthesis providers on whether the exemption list system meets all requirements.  Please contact kirsten@securedna.org if interested.

Sentinel Bio

Sentinel Bio is a new non-profit philanthropic fund that supports efforts to eliminate pandemic risks.

• Sentinel Bio was launched out of Ergo Impact as an independent 501(c)(3) non-profit by Claire Qureshi (CEO) and Joshua Monrad (Program Director). We previously led biosecurity grantmaking at Effective Giving and will carry forward key collaborations with grantees and philanthropic partners from this work. 

• We focus on three mission areas: 

  • Understanding the drivers of catastrophic pandemics

  • Strengthening safeguards on advanced biotechnologies

  • Bolstering global pandemic preparedness 

• We recently made a $50,000 grant to the Open Molecular Software Foundation to support a fellowship for Samuel Curtis focused on biosecurity for biological design tools.

• In the coming months, we plan to share more information on our website about our priority areas and how we work – get in touch to learn more in the meantime.

Texas A&M Scowcroft Institute

The Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs is a policy-oriented research institute and think tank at Texas A&M University. Its Biosecurity and Pandemic Policy Program is dedicated to promoting a world safe, secure, and resilient against existential biological threats.

• The Pandemic and Biosecurity Policy Program's Director, Gerry Parker, will testify at a hearing titled “Risky Research: Oversight of U.S. Taxpayer Funded High-Risk Virus Research” before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on Thursday, July 11, 2024, at 10:30 a.m ET.

• The Scowcroft Institute will co-host the Operation Warp Speed 2.0 Conference on December 5 with 1Day Sooner. The conference will be hosted at the Texas A&M DC site.

Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security

The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security (newsletter) explores how new policy approaches, scientific advances and technological innovations can improve organizations, systems, policies and tools to prevent and respond to pandemics and biological threats.

• CHS continues to assist policymakers and other key stakeholders in AIxBio governance. We provided responses to NTIA RFC on Dual-Use Foundation AI Models; NSCEB Interim Report and AIxBio Policy Options; and NIST AI Risk Management Framework.

• Dr. Amesh Adalja and colleagues published 4 major reports dissecting pandemic-prone viral families and continues to advocate for research-informed prioritization of viral families with true pandemic potential to guide medical countermeasure development.

• Our BWC Forum: Biotech, Biosecurity & Beyond podcast has 4 new episodes!

• CHS hosted 3 Capitol Hill Steering Committee events: in February, on the President’s EO on AIxBio; in April, on US pandemic preparedness investments; in May, to discuss how US agencies will strengthen biodefense.

• Together with the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, CHS facilitated the Southeast Asia Strategic Biosecurity Dialogues in Singapore and led roundtable discussions on current and emerging biosecurity issues facing the region. 

Jobs, events, and other opportunities  

You can find additional biosecurity and pandemic preparedness jobs on the 80,000 Hours job board.

• Ginkgo Biosecurity is hiring a Director of Infrastructure Enablement and a Senior R&D Scientist.

• The MIT group Sculpting Evolution is hiring wetlab staff to support the Nucleic Acid Observatory program. More information available here and here.

• Rolling call for applicants for CSR’s Mid-Career Biodefense Bootcamp.

• Applications for NTI’s fall 2024 internships are now open until July 14.

• Call for nominations of experts to provide scientific advice within the Biological Weapons Convention; application deadline: 14 July.

• Sign up for this 2024 Summer Webinar Series run by the Horizon Institute for Public Service, partnering with the Inclusive Abundance Initiative, the Policy Entrepreneurs Network, and the Scowcroft Institute for International Affairs at the Bush School of Texas A&M University.

• For everyone based in DC: There will be a Biosecurity Happy Hour on Tuesday, July 16, 5:30 - 7:30 pm EDT.

We regularly solicit updates from a group of organizations that we believe are doing impactful work to reduce GCBRs in order to improve transparency, facilitate collaboration, and otherwise accelerate progress in our community.

Do you have any opportunities (jobs, events, etc.) you would like to share with our network? Please use this form to submit them.

Did you find this newsletter helpful? Do you have ideas on how we could improve it? Please fill out this brief feedback form or email hello@tessa.fyi.

Cover image credit: Berkshire Community College Bioscience Image Library from https://www.flickr.com/photos/146824358@N03/36248755355/in/gallery-141423754@N05-72157673950484678/.

• Informal webinars to support the BWC Working Group

• The launch of the Asia Center for Health Security

• Addressing misuse risk from AI-enabled biological tools

• Many open applications for fellowships (some closing very soon!)

• And more!

UNIDIR

The United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) is an autonomous institution within the United Nations that conducts independent research on pressing global challenges related to disarmament, arms control and international security. 

• The Friends of the Chair of the BWC Working Group, together with UNIDIR and UNODA, are organizing a series of informal webinars intended to support ongoing activities of the BWC Working Group and stimulate thinking and discussion during the intersessional period. The events will consist of an expert panel followed by a moderated question-and-answer session with the audience. More info and registration:

  • Scientific and Technological Advisory Mechanism (25 April): https://unidir.org/BWC-STAM

  • Confidence Building and Transparency (6 May): https://unidir.org/BWC-CBaT

  • National Implementation (8 May): https://unidir.org/BWC-NI

  • Compliance and Verification (13 May): https://unidir.org/BWC-CaV

• The BWC National Implementation Database keeps growing and it now contains information on 75 States Parties. Check out their relevant legislation, biosafety and biosecurity measures and much more at https://bwcimplementation.org/.

Texas A&M Scowcroft Institute

The Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs is a policy-oriented research institute and think tank at Texas A&M University. Its Biosecurity and Pandemic Policy Program is dedicated to promoting a world safe, secure, and resilient against existential biological threats.

• We submitted a joint letter to the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology (NSCEB) alongside the Federation of American Scientists, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, and NTI | bio. The letter responds to the NSCEB’s recent interim report and white paper on policy options for AI and biotechnology.

• We hosted a workshop on expanding global vaccine manufacturing capacity with over 20 current and former US officials, industry, academia, and NGO experts. The resulting report, which will be published next month, will discuss business plans, regulatory ecosystems, procurement and production practices, and leadership priorities for building vaccine manufacturing capacity, and draw from the history of government or donor-supported manufacturing initiatives.

• The Program's Director, Gerry Parker, continues to be involved in the response to the emergence and spread of highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influzena in cattle. 

Effective Giving - Biosecurity Program

Effective Giving is a nonprofit organization that helps major donors find the most promising solutions to the world's most pressing problems. Over the past few years, their Biosecurity team has focused on researching areas to prioritize within biosecurity, refining the investigation and evaluation of grants, and working closely with grantees.

• We have been excited to welcome Claire Qureshi, who has joined to lead our program.

• We made two grants focused on promoting nucleic acid security and mitigating AI-Biosecurity risks:

  • $546,335 for the International Gene Synthesis Consortium for an effort to develop benchmarking tools for synthesis screening systems, in collaboration with BBN, Battelle, Aclid, and Uni. of Birmingham.

  • $1,633,542 for SecureBio, for their work on the DNA synthesis screening and biosecurity evaluations for AI.

  • We are investigating other grants in similar domains, but continue to anticipate limited grantmaking in the coming months.

• We attended the launch of the new Asia Centre for Health Security in Singapore, which our program has been working to help set up since 2022.

Council on Strategic Risks

The Council on Strategic Risks (CSR) is a nonprofit, non-partisan security policy institute devoted to anticipating, analyzing and addressing core systemic risks to security in the 21st century, with special examination of the ways in which these risks intersect and exacerbate one another.

• We published the initial FY25 President’s Budget Request highlights. As details are released, we’ll finalize our deep-dive and update the Biodefense Budget Breakdown, which fills a major gap: biosecurity resourcing data was insufficiently collected and made public previously, an obstacle to monitoring progress. 

• CSR published The National Security Rationale for Stockpiling Key Pharmaceutical Ingredients, highlighting security risks and recommendations. 

• Our final months’ activities for our current Fellowship on Ending Bioweapons class included a scenario exercise. We’re selecting the next cohort from a record-breaking number of applications. 

• We ran the first 3-day workshop of our new fellowship, the Mid-Career Biodefense Bootcamp. Fellows met current and former key officials and other experts (e.g., Ken Alibek). We have a rolling call for applicants for the next cohorts.

• CSR recently published a blog post that explains the key updates from US Department of State compliance reports on the core treaties that address weapons of mass destruction.

Centre for Long-Term Resilience

The Biosecurity Policy Unit at Centre for Long-Term Resilience works closely with the UK Government and other stakeholders to reduce extreme biological risks.

• In March, we published a policy paper advising on how the UK Government should address the misuse risk from AI-enabled biological tools

• In addition, we outlined our position on the current value of risk assessments over evaluations for AI-enabled biological tools

• In April, we provided oral evidence on engineering biology biosecurity risks to the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee. This follows our written evidence submission and consultation with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology prior to the publication of the UK's National Vision for Engineering Biology in 2023

• Our application hiring round for a Biosecurity Policy Adviser has now closed.

CEPI

CEPI is a global partnership working to accelerate the development of vaccines and other biologic countermeasures against epidemic and pandemic threats.

• CEPI and the European Union’s Horizon Europe Programme have co-funded a $57 million project to test inhaled and nasal vaccines designed to stop viral infection using human challenge studies, which are uniquely able to progress such transmission-blocking vaccines. 

• Taking place in Rio de Janeiro on July 29-30 this year, CEPI, Brazil’s Ministry of Health and Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (Fiocruz) will co-host the Global Pandemic Preparedness Summit 2024. The two-day event, which will convene R&D experts, government officials, civil society representatives, and leaders from global health and industry, aims to reinvigorate momentum for pandemic preparedness and response.

• In April, CEPI joined the High-Level Emergency regional meeting hosted by the WHO, Africa CDC and the DRC Ministry of Public Health and Hygiene to discuss the escalating prevalence of Clade I mpox (fatal in 5-10% of cases) in the DRC and other African countries.

Blueprint Biosecurity

Blueprint Biosecurity is a nonprofit dedicated to achieving breakthroughs in humanity’s ability to prevent, mitigate, and suppress pandemics.

• We are working on mapping capabilities for transmission suppression in the built environment and are beginning to complete shallow investigations into the most promising interventions.

• Far-UVC:

  • We are working on a cost-benefit analysis for far-UVC, modeling the direct and indirect costs of widespread deployment of far-UVC fixtures and the associated benefits for endemic and pandemic pathogens. 

  • We are supporting research modeling ozone production and scrubbing in an indoor environment and research on chamber studies pairing a far-UVC fixture with an ozone scrubber.

  • We made two awards from our funding round to address open questions on eye irritation and discomfort under far-UVC exposure.

• We added three new members to our team and we recently closed an application round for a PPE Program Director.

• We joined the Global Health Technologies Coalition.

• We kicked off work on a PPE Innovation Roadmap to provide clear direction on advances needed in PPE for pandemic prevention.

Jobs, events and other opportunities  

You can find additional biosecurity and pandemic preparedness jobs on the 80,000 Hours job board.

• May 5 | Biosecurity Fundamentals Course from Bluedot Impact:

  https://biosecurityfundamentals.com/

• May 19 | NTI Next Generation for Biosecurity Delegation: https://www.nti.org/news/apply-for-the-2024-nti-bio-next-generation-biosecurity-delegation/

• May 10 | India Biosecurity Fellowship, hosted by Gryphon Scientific and Sri Balaji Vidyapeeth: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/IndiaBiosecurityFellowship

• May 29 | Biosecurity Game Changers fellowship for early- to mid-career professionals in Africa and the USA: https://apply.interfolio.com/144652

  • Extra note from CEPI: Have you got a game-changing idea to strengthen biosecurity in support of greater pandemic preparedness? If yes, CEPI invites you to apply for our new fellowship position as part of Brown University’s Biosecurity Game Changers Fellowship.

• June 2 | NTI Next Generation for Biosecurity Competition Deadline: https://www.nti.org/news/eighth-annual-next-generation-for-biosecurity-competition-open-for-applications/

• Council on Strategic Risks has applications open for their Mid-Career Biodefense Bootcamp: https://councilonstrategicrisks.org/2024/02/29/call-for-applications-mid-career-biodefense-bootcamp-fellowship-2024/

• The Astera Institute is seeking short statements of ideas for innovations that might help synthetic biology scale: https://astera.org/call-for-ideas/

• Asia Center for Health Security has a research assistant position: https://careers.nus.edu.sg/NUS/job/SSHSPH-Research-Associate-%28Biorisk-Management-Projects-Development%29-Kent/23051644/ 

• CEPI has Open Calls for Proposals in "Innovations to Prepare for Future Epidemics and Pandemics" including: advancing innovative rapid-response vaccine platforms that can transform the response to a future Disease X; developing new vaccine candidates against CEPI priority pathogens.

• At the Global Health Security Conference in Sydney, Australia (June 18-21), CEPI and Global Affairs Canada will host a side event on Strengthening lab biosafety and biosecurity: a roadmap towards implementing performance-based standards, exploring biosafety and biosecurity risks in a post-COVID-19 pandemic world, and opportunities to accelerate implementation of performance-based standards.

We regularly solicit updates from a group of organizations that we believe are doing impactful work to reduce GCBRs in order to improve transparency, facilitate collaboration, and otherwise accelerate progress in our community.

Cover image credit: David S. Goodsell, RCSB Protein Data Bank; doi: 10.2210/rcsb_pdb/goodsell-gallery-023

Did you find this newsletter helpful? Do you have ideas on how we could improve it? Please fill out this brief feedback form or email hello@tessa.fyi.

• An RFP to fund research on germicidal UV exposure

• The launch of the US-UK Strategic Dialogue on Biosecurity

• A reading list on the ARPA model

• The public release of SecureDNA’s gene synthesis screening software

• And more!

1Day Sooner

1Day Sooner is a nonprofit organization that advocates for high-impact medical studies and the efficient development and deployment of life-saving medical research and public health interventions.

• 1Day Sooner was a contributing partner in the launch of the International Pandemic Preparedness Secretariat’s implementation report on the 100 Day Mission

• Building off our earlier advocacy work around the FDA’s proposed Emerging Pandemic Pathogens Program (EPPP), we coordinated another letter in support of appropriations for the EPPP to Congress

Blueprint Biosecurity

Blueprint Biosecurity is a new nonprofit dedicated to achieving breakthroughs in the ability to prevent, mitigate, and suppress pandemics.

• We launched an RFP to fund research on far-UVC eye safety. We will soon begin disbursing funds to selected teams.

• Far-UVC Program Director, Richard Williamson, spoke on a panel at the National Academies on indoor air chemistry impacts of germicidal UV.

• As part of our far-UVC blueprint, we are undertaking work on modeling disinfection efficacy, a cost-benefit analysis, and epidemiological modeling of societal level implementation.

• We helped support a Center for Health Security workshop exploring the uncertainties surrounding the use of far-UVC technology for pathogen inactivation and will be organizing sessions and presenting at other far-UVC related conferences and workshops this year.

• We managed an extensive investigation into Pandemic-Proof PPE by Gryphon Scientific. We are also planning on hiring a Program Manager to focus on ongoing PPE work.

• We worked with Sarah Carter to produce a report on Know Your Customer (KYC) frameworks for the Life Sciences which will be published shortly.

• Working with Gryphon Scientific, we’ve launched a project on built environment transmission suppression where we’re mapping the field and investigating the most promising interventions.

Center for Long-Term Resilience

The Biosecurity Policy Unit at Centre for Longer-Term Resilience works closely with the UK Government and other stakeholders to reduce extreme biological risks.

• We hosted a Biosecurity unit strategy retreat to refresh the high-level strategy for CLTR’s biosecurity policy work, and start planning our priorities for 2024.

• We continue to work on assessing and mitigating biological risks at the intersection of AI and the life sciences (or AI:Bio). Over the last few months, this has included the development of a capability-based risk assessment for specialised biological tools and work on the potential biological risks posed by Frontier large language models (or LLMs). You can see some of our public-facing work on AI:Bio risks here.

• We ran a workshop on overcoming challenges with synthetic nucleic acid screening implementation at the request of DSIT, and our public report is now available.

• We provided feedback on several “chronic risk assessments” related to biosecurity issues being developed by the UK Cabinet Office.

• Our Senior Biosecurity Policy Advisor, Sophie Rose, attended RAND’s workshop on Frontier AI and biosecurity in Washington DC in early February.

Council on Strategic Risks

The Council on Strategic Risks (CSR) is a nonprofit, non-partisan security policy institute devoted to anticipating, analyzing and addressing core systemic risks to security in the 21st century, with special examination of the ways in which these risks intersect and exacerbate one another.

• On January 16, CSR hosted the launch of the U.S.-UK Strategic Dialogue on Biosecurity, an official bilateral process that should maintain policy and programmatic momentum in both nations. A key theme was the changing biological threat landscape and its impact on pacing our biodefense efforts.

• CSR has released a new report, Lessons from Kazakhstan for 2024: On the Front Lines of Nuclear and Biological Risks, highlighting Kazakhstan’s role within the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and the development of the International Agency for Biological Safety (IABS). We also co-hosted an event with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on Kazakhstan’s work to address WMD risks.

• CSR officially launched its Biodefense Budget Breakdown, a public data visualization tool to provide increased awareness for U.S. federal budgeting of biodefense efforts from 2019 to present. Look for analysis of the forthcoming President’s Budget Request!

• We recently published a review of the 2023 Biological and Toxins Weapons Convention (BWC) Meeting of States Parties (MSP), highlighting slow momentum and challenges due to geopolitical tensions. The summary includes CSR’s Non-governmental Organization statement for the MSP.

Effective Giving - Biosecurity Program

Effective Giving is a nonprofit organization that helps major donors find the most promising solutions to the world's most pressing problems. Over the past few years, their Biosecurity team has focused on researching areas to prioritize within biosecurity, refining the investigation and evaluation of grants, and working closely with grantees.

• In April, we will be in Singapore for the launch of the Asia Centre for Health Security, which is being established with support from EG. (Page on the NUS website; full website under development.)

• We are currently focusing on refining our strategy for the coming years and, therefore, expect limited grantmaking capacity in the next few months. (This also owes partly to an increased focus within EG on grantmaking within our AI program at the moment.)

• We are currently collecting insights on best practices in the philanthropic sector, including on strategy development and monitoring & evaluation – if you know someone with significant expertise on this topic who could be interested in speaking, please get in touch!

Institute for Progress

The Institute for Progress (IFP) is a non-partisan research and advocacy organization dedicated to accelerating scientific, technological, and industrial progress while safeguarding humanity’s future.

• Letters to Congress

  • Congress Can Improve our Pandemic Preparedness: IFP led a coalition letter to congressional leaders, calling for specific reforms to the Federal Select Agent Program that would improve effective oversight of US laboratories. 

  • Using PAHPA to Address Biosecurity Threats: IFP sent a letter to a bipartisan group of senators and representatives leading committees that are reauthorizing the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act that emphasized the need for PAHPA to adequately address biosecurity, not just public health concerns.

• Resources

  • The ARPA Model: A Reading List: At IFP, we’ve been interested in the ARPA model for a while, and have written extensively about both the model’s strengths and its limitations. We’ve compiled this list of resources, last updated in January 2024, and will maintain it as a living resource that is updated periodically.

• News

  • Statecraft Interview: How to Replicate Operation Warp Speed: On November 6th, the Institute for Progress, 1Day Sooner, and the Medical Countermeasures Coalition co-hosted a conference on Operation Warp Speed and its potential descendants. At the conference, former Secretary of the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) Alex Azar answered these questions and more.

Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security

The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security (newsletter) explores how new policy approaches, scientific advances and technological innovations can improve organizations, systems, policies and tools to prevent and respond to pandemics and biological threats.

• CHS published key takeaways from the November 2023 convening on AIxBio governance. We are calling for the creation of a public-private information sharing forum, a regulatory framework and a legal accountability framework. Please review the executive summary for more details.

• CHS responded to NIST RFI on Implementing the AI Executive Order to guard against high-consequence bio risks. Our response focused on LLMs and BDTs, outlining biosecurity considerations related to generative AI risk management, AI evaluation and red teaming.

• We led a coalition of more than 100 stakeholders, including Biotechnology Innovation Organization and the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials to support a letter sent to congressional leadership urging the reauthorization of the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act. 

SecureBio

SecureBio is a nonprofit research organization working on new technologies and policy proposals to delay, detect, and defend against catastrophic pandemics.

• SecureDNA has publicly released its cutting-edge gene synthesis screening software, made available free of charge. SecureDNA uses a novel exact-match search algorithm that detects all known hazards and predicted functional variants down to 30 base-pairs. The software has a negligible false alarm rate by using reverse screening to remove known non-hazards, which enables automated screening. Its threat database is continuously updated, and the system relies on privacy-preserving cryptography to maintain user confidentiality.

• SecureBio has published a PPE report, which outlines a roadmap to: design pandemic-grade reusable PPE, including Power-Assisted Personal Respirators, incentivize cost-effective production, improve stockpiling, drive demand for pandemic-grade PPE, and safeguard supply chains and amplify manufacturing capabilities.

• SecureBio has joined the U.S. AI Safety Institute Consortium convened by NIST to develop science-based and empirically backed guidelines and standards for AI measurement and policy.

UNIDIR

The United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) is an autonomous institution within the United Nations that conducts independent research on pressing global challenges related to disarmament, arms control and international security. 

• The newly launched BWC National Implementation Measures Database is continuously updated with new data. You can now find over 60 profiles of the State Parties of the BWC, including a section on Biosafety and Biosecurity measures of each country. Also, by searching for the term "biorisks", you can navigate over 45 resources, including legislation, guidelines, codes of conduct, associations, working papers, assistance and cooperation offers, and more. Give it a try!

Jobs, events, and other opportunities  

You can find additional biosecurity and pandemic preparedness jobs on the 80,000 Hours job board.

• The Center for Long-Term Resilience (CLTR) opened a job application in January for an additional Biosecurity Policy Advisor position, the full description of which can be found here. The application closes on March 8, 2024.

• The National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology is looking for Summer Fellows and Summer Interns. 

• Panoplia Labs - Researcher (Boston; R&D on anti-virals for future pandemics)

• We (Tessa and Anemone) recently interviewed more than a dozen biosecurity experts about misconceptions and mistakes that they believe are common in their field, including the following areas of disagreement: What lessons should we learn from COVID-19? Should we prioritise preparing for the most likely pandemics or the most destructive pandemics — and is there even a genuine trade-off between these priorities? How big a deal are “information hazards” in biosecurity?

We regularly solicit updates from a group of organizations that we believe are doing impactful work to reduce GCBRs in order to improve transparency, facilitate collaboration, and otherwise accelerate progress in our community.

Did you find this newsletter helpful? Do you have ideas on how we could improve it? Please fill out this brief feedback form or email hello@tessa.fyi.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this newsletter do not necessarily represent those of the newsletter authors. This is an independent project conducted outside of the authors’ organizational affiliations.

We hope to improve transparency, facilitate collaboration, and otherwise accelerate progress in our community. For this edition, we’ve included 11 organizations that we believe are doing impactful work to reduce GCBRs, including two new organizations: UNIDIR and Concentric by Ginkgo Bioworks.

If you have any feedback, you can use this brief form or email Tessa at hello@tessa.fyi. A special thanks to Aron Lajko for his help with Airtable.

UNIDIR

The United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) is an autonomous institution within the United Nations that conducts independent research on pressing global challenges related to disarmament, arms control and international security. 

• UNIDIR and VERTIC have launched the BWC National Implementation Measures Database, a searchable, publicly accessible database of information on national implementation measures undertaken by all States Parties to the BWC.

  • The official launch event, held 15 August 2023, can be viewed here.

  • The database is designed to strengthen BWC implementation by building an understanding of what has been done and allowing stakeholders to better understand different approaches to national implementation.

  • For more information, reach out to Ms. Clarisse Bertherat (clarisse.bertherat@un.org). 

• UNIDIR has undertaken a number of activities related to BWC verification, including:

  • The publication of Verifying the BWC: A Primer.

  • In-person and virtual events around BWC meetings, as well as presentations and bilateral briefings with BWC States Parties, such as the 29 September Briefing on Verification of the Biological Weapons Convention and a panel on BWC verification during the UNODA-UNIDIR-WHO biorisks conference.

SecureBio

SecureBio is a nonprofit research organization working on new technologies and policy proposals to delay, detect, and defend against catastrophic pandemics.

• The Nucleic Acid Observatory team has begun an experiment collecting wastewater samples from a major US airport and one of the nation's largest wastewater treatment plants. The team has also published a report on pathogen abundance as a function of disease prevalence. 

• The Far-UVC group has published its paper on the safety of germicidal light.

• A newly formed AI research group led by Dr Anjali Gopal has released a pre-print on the biorisks associated with model weight proliferation of Large Language Models, which was covered in major news outlets.

• Prof Kevin Esvelt spoke about biorisks on the 80,000 Hours podcast.

• SecureBio welcomed the news that the US government has canceled DeepVZN, a virus identification program.

Open Philanthropy, Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness team

Open Philanthropy’s Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness team supports efforts to strengthen disease surveillance, the governance of dual-use research, policy development, and other activities that could reduce the threat of a major global disruption.

• Awarded a three-year grant in support of the World Health Organization’s work on governing dual-use research and using life sciences research responsibly.

• Ran a hiring round for several roles, including roles in operations, research, and grantmaking (applications now closed).

• Began working with Synonym Bio, a fermentation engineering consultancy, and ALLFED, a non-profit focused on food supply during disasters, to investigate scale-up of industrial food production in the event of severe disruption to agriculture.

• Our Biosecurity Scholarships program has been folded into a new program, the career development and transition funding program, which aims to provide support – in the form of funding for graduate study, unpaid internships, self-study, career transition and exploration periods, and other activities relevant to building career capital – for individuals at any career stage who want to pursue careers that could help to reduce global catastrophic risks or otherwise improve the long-term future.

NTI | bio

NTI Global Biological Policy and Programs (NTI | bio) works to build international capacity to prevent catastrophic biological events. We advance this work by strengthening biotechnology governance and biosecurity internationally; bolstering international capabilities to prevent bioweapons development and use by states; driving progress in advancing global health security capacity; and developing the next generation of biosecurity experts. 

• Vice President Dr. Jaime Yassif testified for the October 18th hearing “Strengthening Biosafety and Biosecurity Standards: Protecting Against Future Pandemics” convened by the U.S. House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.  

• We published a new report, “Convergence of AI and the Life Sciences: Safeguarding Technology, Rethinking Governance, and Preventing Catastrophe” on October 31st as part of AI Fringe and on the margins of the UK government’s AI Safety Summit.  The report helped inform and was referenced in the UK AI Safety Summit discussion paper, Capabilities and Risks from Frontier AI, and was briefed to U.S. Congressional audiences. 

• NTI | bio convened two working groups to discuss the Joint Assessment Mechanism (JAM) to discern the source of high-consequence biological events of unknown origin.  To continue advancing discussions about establishing the JAM, Austrian Ambassador to the UN Alexander Marschik hosted NTI | bio and representatives from 16 nations for a working luncheon.

Subscribe to our bi-monthly newsletter here. 

Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security

The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security explores how new policy approaches, scientific advances and technological innovations can improve organizations, systems, policies and tools to prevent and respond to pandemics and biological threats.

• CHS published the Model State Indoor Air Quality Act, providing a legal roadmap for reducing the spread of infectious diseases inside buildings. This was utilized by Massachusetts to introduce the Improve Indoor Air Quality bill. To promulgate the model law, Dr. Gigi Gronvall and colleagues published an article in JAMA.

• CHS hosted two fireside chats: in September, Major General Paul Friedrichs discussed launching the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness & Response Policy; in October, CDC Director Dr. Mandy Cohen discussed evaluating lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, ways to strengthen CDC and restore trust in the institution, and key CDC priorities.

• Our BWC Global Forum: Biotech, Biosecurity & Beyond podcast has 4 new episodes!

• CHS convened a small meeting of experts on AIxBio governance with participation from AI companies, government officials and biosecurity policy experts on Nov 29 in Washington, DC. 

Sign up for our newsletter, Health Security Decoded here. 

Institute for Progress

The Institute for Progress (IFP) is a non-partisan research and advocacy organization dedicated to accelerating scientific, technological, and industrial progress while safeguarding humanity’s future.

• Requests for information

  • How Project NextGen Can Create Better Vaccines by Juan Cambeiro 

  • Making the CDC Modern by Arielle D’Souza

  • Preventing the Misuse of Breakthrough Health Research by Janika Schmitt 

  • Mitigating Risks from Dual-Use Research by Alec Stapp and Arielle D’Souza

• White papers

  • How ARPA-H’s Use-Inspired Research Can Accelerate Progress in Health by Janika Schmitt, Jassi Pannu, and Jacob Swett 

• News 

  • The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists referenced IFP’s congressional staff delegation trip

  • Science|Business referenced IFP’s work on AI risks in biology

You can subscribe to our newsletter using this link.

Effective Giving

Effective Giving is a nonprofit organization that helps major donors find the most promising solutions to the world's most pressing problems. Over the past few years, their Biosecurity team has focused on researching areas to prioritize within biosecurity, refining the investigation and evaluation of grants, and working closely with grantees.

• We recommended a number of grants for the establishment of a new health security research centre based in Singapore, which we expect will launch early next year.

• Beyond this centre, the organisations we have recommended grants to this year are: Blueprint Biosecurity, Brown Pandemic Center, Harvard CCDD (operational support for Marc Lipsitch), NTI bio, RAND; for a total of €8,0M in grants so far this year.

• We’re currently investigating opportunities to strengthen security around DNA synthesis, in the context of the recent US Executive Order (on AI) and globally.

• We’re doing a shallow investigation of various high-level interventions to reduce biological risks from state actors. In that context, we’ll be in Geneva in December for the third session of the BWC Working Group.

Council on Strategic Risks

The Council on Strategic Risks (CSR) is a nonprofit, non-partisan security policy institute devoted to anticipating, analyzing and addressing core systemic risks to security in the 21st century, with special examination of the ways in which these risks intersect and exacerbate one another.

• CSR has released a new report, Addressing the Threat of Disease Spillover, on the intersection of ecological and biological security in zoonotic spillover prevention, underscoring the importance of bridging communities and activities. 

• This year, CSR will launch its Biodefense Budget Analysis, which will be made available for public use on our website, providing increased awareness and transparency for federal budgeting of biodefense efforts from 2019 to the present fiscal year cycle.

• We recently published a review of the UK AI Safety Summit to assess the nexus of AI and biosecurity - a space that CSR will be heavily working in. 

To keep up to date with announcements and postings, follow our accounts on LinkedIn and Twitter!

Concentric by Ginkgo Bioworks

Concentric offers a global operating system for collection, detection, response, and risk analysis to enable an early warning of biological threats. We generate actionable intelligence and expert decision support for the national security and public health sectors.

• We expanded our work with the CDC’s Traveler-based Genomic Surveillance program (TGS) to monitor more than 30 new viruses, bacteria, and antimicrobial resistance targets—including several seasonal respiratory pathogens. The program expansion will launch at four of the program’s seven major international airports (New York, JFK, San Francisco, Boston, and Washington DC, Dulles). 

• Our epidemiology and risk analytics team has published two exciting papers, one focused on spillover risk published in the BMJ, and another on the risk of future epidemics as a joint Center for Global Development and Disease Control Priorities working paper. 

• Concentric by Ginkgo hosted a panel on AI and biosecurity and a keynote at the AI Fringe Summit in London, on the sidelines of the AI Safety Summit. Matt McKnight, General Manager, Biosecurity at Ginkgo Bioworks wrote a post about the convergence of AI and biology ahead of the event.

Centre for Long-Term Resilience

The Biosecurity Policy Unit at Centre for Longer-Term Resilience works closely with the UK Government and other stakeholders to reduce extreme biological risks.

• The Centre for Long-Term Resilience has joined the UK’s recently formed Biosecurity Leadership Council, with Sophie Rose serving as one of the Council’s inaugural members.

• At the request of the UK Government’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, we ran a workshop on overcoming challenges with synthetic nucleic acid screening implementation, with our public report now available.

• We published a report on the risks at the intersection of AI and Biosecurity.

• We attended meetings in New York alongside the United Nations General Assembly, including an event on Artificial Intelligence and Biosecurity run by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and Foreign Policy.

• We participated in four Artificial Intelligence and Biosecurity events alongside the AI Safety Summit, including the UK Government’s horizon scanning workshop on AI safety risks across scientific disciplines and on a live-streamed panel at the AI Fringe.

1DaySooner

1Day Sooner is a nonprofit organization that advocates for high-impact medical studies and the efficient development and deployment of life-saving medical research and public health interventions.

• Our work on indoor air quality interventions, particularly far-UVC as a means to lower respiratory disease burden and global catastrophic biorisk, was selected for phase II of the UChicago Market Shaping Accelerator Innovation Challenge.

• We coordinated a letter signed by 13 other organizations in support of the establishment of an FDA Emerging Pathogens Preparedness Program.

• We’re continuing to expand our global health work, including our advocacy for hepatitis C human challenge studies and an emerging campaign through 1Day Africa to accelerate R21 vaccine deployment.

You can sign up for our newsletter at the bottom of our homepage.

Jobs and Events

• Job Postings

  • Nucleic Acid Observatory (SecureBio): Bioinformatics Research Scientist

  • Asia Center for Health Security (funded by Effective Giving):

    • Research Associate

    • Executive/Senior Executive for Research Administration

    • Assistant Manager/Senior Assistant Manager (Communications) 

    • Assistant Manager/Senior Assistant Manager (Research Administration)

  • 1Day Sooner is hiring for several openings, including full-time positions as our hepatitis C campaign director, UK advocacy manager, and Operation Warp Speed 2 director. We are also looking for contractors for efforts related to our malaria campaign and Project Next Gen.

• The Biological Weapons Convention Meeting of States Parties will occur December 11-13, just after the fourth working group meeting.

  • You can follow along with daily updates from CBW Events.

  • NTI | bio will host a side event featuring the winners of the seventh annual Next Generation for Biosecurity Competition. 

You can find additional biosecurity and pandemic preparedness jobs on the 80,000 Hours job board.

Did you find this newsletter helpful? Do you have ideas on how we could improve it? Please fill out this short feedback form or email hello@tessa.fyi.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this newsletter do not necessarily represent those of the newsletter authors. This is an independent project conducted outside of the authors’ organizational affiliations.

We hope to improve transparency, facilitate collaboration, and otherwise accelerate progress in our community. For this first edition, we’ve included 11 organizations that we believe are doing impactful work to reduce GCBRs, but this is by no means an exhaustive list, and we hope to broaden our scope in the future.

We’d be grateful for any feedback on the newsletter! You can give us input via this brief form (2 minutes) or by sending an email to Tessa at hello@tessa.fyi. 

Thank you for your interest and support,
Tessa Alexanian, Chris Bakerlee, and Anemone Franz

1DaySooner

1Day Sooner is a nonprofit organization that advocates for high-impact medical studies and the efficient development of life-saving medical research. 

• We're focusing on several major areas, including:

  • Pandemic preparedness through regulatory reform in the US and UK (e.g., the US FDA Emerging Pathogens Preparedness Program)

  • Anticipated approval of the first-ever human challenge trials for hepatitis C; trials are likely to begin in Canada in 2024

  • Continued research into indoor air quality interventions, especially germicidal UV light

• We released our Air Safety to Combat Global Catastrophic Biorisk report in the last quarter.

• We're hiring! We're looking for people to take up our hepatitis C challenge efforts, as well as people interested in either full-time advocacy or contracted scientific/technical advisory roles for our U.S. regulatory efforts.

You can sign up for our newsletter at the bottom of our homepage.

Center for Long-Term Resilience

The Biosecurity Policy Unit at CLTR works closely with the UK Government and other stakeholders to reduce extreme biological risks.

• Our team has been focused on the UK Government’s release of the 2023 Biological Security Strategy.

  • We provided comments on the Strategy in the official press release and a joint statement published on our website. The Strategy’s commitments include advice we have given on novel pathogen surveillance and metagenomics, genetic engineering detection and attribution, and proposed governance structures. We are now focused on assisting with the implementation of the Strategy’s commitments, including:

    • The National Biosurveillance Network setup for novel pathogen detection 

    • Gene Synthesis Screening technical guidelines

    • Formation of the UK’s Biosecurity Leadership Council

• We hosted and ran a day-long Biosecurity Workshop in collaboration with SecureBio, which was well attended by a range of UK and non-UK biosecurity experts from government, academia and industry.

• AI and Biotechnology

  • We published an article in the Financial Times detailing some of the emerging risks at the intersection of AI and Biotechnology which require urgent action.

We are engaged in an AI-Biosecurity workstream with rapid developments in the coming months due to events in the UK. If you are interested in engaging on this topic or any of the above topics, please contact Dr. Cassidy Nelson, Head of Biosecurity Policy at CLTR (cassidy@longtermresilience.org).

Convergent Research

Convergent Research launches Focused Research Organizations (FROs) to tackle large-scale, tightly coordinated, non-profit projects. Their biosecurity team is investigating FROs to reduce risks from pandemics.

• We launched a roadmap towards ubiquitous metagenomic sequencing that asks how metagenomic sequencing could become as widely available as diagnostic PCR machines are today, with funding from Open Philanthropy.

• In June, we hosted a Solid-State Far-UVC Emitter Workshop that brought together two dozen academic and industry experts to gather input on the possible approaches for solid-state Far-UVC and develop operationalized target metrics for emitter device performance. The team is now working on a whitepaper to capture the discussion and currently believes that an FRO with a focus on safety and efficacy testing holds the most promise.

Council on Strategic Risks

The Council on Strategic Risks (CSR) is a nonprofit, non-partisan security policy institute devoted to anticipating, analyzing and addressing core systemic risks to security in the 21st century.

• As part of our efforts to increase awareness of the importance of the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act Reauthorization, CSR hosted two roundtable discussions featuring perspectives from previous ASPR leaders and the role of the White House.

• To increase awareness and transparency of the biodefense efforts by the United States, our team has been building a new tool for analyzing biodefense spending across the U.S. Federal Budget, set to launch on the CSR website later this summer.

• Tracking the status of our organization's recommendations on biodefense throughout our history, the first installment of our Scorecard Series will be published in the coming weeks.

• Targeting an early September release, CSR is finalizing a new report on the intersection of ecological and biological security in zoonotic spillover prevention.

To keep up to date with announcements and postings, follow our accounts on LinkedIn and Twitter!

Effective Giving Biosecurity team 

Effective Giving is a nonprofit organization that helps major donors find the most promising solutions to the world's most pressing problems. Over the past few years, their Biosecurity team has focused on researching areas to prioritize within biosecurity, refining the investigation and evaluation of grants, and working closely with grantees.

Grantmaking

• Since 2021, we’ve recommended grants totaling approximately €26M to support work across a wide range of areas within biosecurity and pandemic preparedness.

• We have primarily recommended grants to well-established organizations (as opposed to, e.g., scholarships to individuals). A few examples of our past grantees include: 

  • Gryphon Scientific 

  • International Biosecurity & Biosafety Initiative for Science 

  • Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security 

• We are especially interested in identifying more excellent grant opportunities to investigate further, including (but definitely not limited to):

  • life sciences research oversight

  • gene synthesis security

  • biological weapons governance

  • pandemic preparedness policy 

Supporting GCBR mitigation efforts in Asia

• We’ve spent much of the past year investigating grants to support the establishment of a new research center on health security based in Southeast Asia. This project is still in an early stage, but we hope to be able to share more sometime next year. 

Effective Giving does not maintain a social media presence, but our biosecurity program officer Joshua Monrad spoke (in a personal capacity) on the Hear This Idea podcast in October 2022.

Gryphon Scientific

Gryphon Scientific is a consulting practice that uses rigorous scientific analyses to address problems of global health and security. 

Focus areas and projects

• Towards a Theory of Pandemic Proof PPE looking at everything from PPE design (e.g., full-body designs that allow female-bodied workers to use the bathroom without fully doffing) to requirements for protection, to supply chain.

• Creating a global research agenda to fill critical data gaps in biosafety instead of relying on analogies from aviation and nuclear power for risk assessments. Please share your ideas on biosafety data gaps or innovative practices to reduce risks!

  • We are recruiting participants (especially from the Global South) for workshops related to the agenda; email Ryan Ritterson at rritterson@gryphonscientific.com for more information.

  • For life scientists or engineers interested in biosafety research, we can provide concepts for experiments and help kickstart your research. For more information, email Rocco Casagrande at rocco@gryphonscientific.com.

• Dual-use risk assessments for AI systems in collaboration with both AI companies and government players.

• A pilot of a Benefit Assessment Framework to Support Decisions on Human Pathogen Research to address the relative lack of tools for assessing a research proposal’s benefits to public health in addition to its biosafety/security risks and scientific merit. Reach out to Dan Greene at dgreene@gryphonscientific.com if you’d like a copy of the draft whitepaper.

• Preparing a report estimating the amount of pathogen research conducted in the private sector in the USA to assist in prioritizing policy interventions.

Recent Publications

• Empirical Biosafety: Rate of Splashes When Opening Microfuge Tubes with Various Methods, Applied Biosafety, June 2023

• Policy Advocacy: a New York Times opinion piece, “Biology is Dangerously Outpacing Policv” and a witness testimony at the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Hearing: “Biosafety and Risky Research: Examining if Science is Outpacing Policy and Safety”

• Biosecurity standards: Cyberbiosecurity in high-containment laboratories, Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology, July 2023

• We’re hiring for several roles, including a research assistant, to support our international engagement practice area.

Updates on Gryphon’s projects will be posted on the Our Work page and LinkedIn.

Institute for Progress

The Institute for Progress (IFP) is a non-partisan research and advocacy organization dedicated to accelerating scientific, technological, and industrial progress while safeguarding humanity’s future.

Focus areas

• Legislative 

  • Ongoing reauthorization of the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act 

  • Establishing Independent Biorisk Management 

  • Biosecurity Congressional Staff Delegation Trip 

• Agency

  • Engaging with Project Next Gen and lessons learned from Operation Warp Speed

  • Workshop on Healthcare Reimbursement Codes

Publications

• Requests for information

  • How AI Can Help Prevent Biosecurity Disasters by Juan Cambeiro 

  • How DARPA Can Anticipate Downside Risk by Juan Cambeiro and Arielle D’Souza 

  • How DARPA Can Proactively Shape Emerging Technologies by Tim Hwang and Caleb Watney

  • Preparing for Pandemic Preparedness Legislation by Arielle D’Souza

• White papers

  • Indoor Air Quality Is the Next Great Public Health Challenge by Juan Cambeiro and Brian Potter 

  • How At-Home Rapid Tests Could Help Prevent the Next Pandemic by Ryan Remmel 

  • How the NSF Moved Faster than the NIH During COVID-19 by Maxwell Tabarrok

• News 

  • It’s past time to address the problem of indoor air quality. A new technology can help by Juan Cambeiro and Brian Potter 

  • Biden’s vaccine project needs to be more like Operation Warp Speed by Alec Stapp and Arielle D’Souza

You can subscribe to their newsletter using this link.

Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security

The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security focuses on research to examine how scientific and technological innovations can strengthen health security.

Focus areas and projects: 

• We are focused on the reauthorization of the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act (PAHPA) and ensuring that Congress includes new measures to improve pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response.

  • The Center organized over 30 stakeholders to send a letter to members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee strongly urging reauthorization.

  • We are working to ensure critical bicameral, bipartisan legislative language makes it into the final PAHPA package, including the Securing Gene Synthesis Act, the Artificial Intelligence and Biosecurity Risk Assessment Act, the Disease X Act of 2023, and the Diagnostics, Testing and Preparedness Plan Act.

  • We are also focused on ensuring that the Senate’s appropriations report preserves key biosecurity language, including on funding a Disease X Medical Countermeasures Program at BARDA, strengthening the government's bioattribution capabilities, and regulating gene synthesis.

• We developed a model state indoor air quality act, which we will officially unveil during an August 17^th webinar. The model state law provides a legal foundation for states to improve indoor air quality and mitigate the spread of airborne infectious diseases, including during future pandemics.

• Our team is gearing up to attend the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC) Working Group on the Strengthening of the Treaty and host an in-person side event, The BWC Global  Forum: Biotech, Biosecurity & Beyond. For more information, please contact Gigi Gronvall (ggronvall@jhu.edu) and Matthew Shearer (mshearer@jhu.edu). 

• Check out the July/August 2023 issue of Health Security online now, which includes a GCBR special feature.

Opportunities and Collaboration

• We are exploring potential policy or regulation that could reduce risks related to the intersection of AI and biotechnology. 

  • We are interested in connecting with those who have technical AI experience and are interested in safety policy at the convergence of AI and biosecurity.

• We are also interested in collaborations in the multidisciplinary field of critical infrastructure systems resilience, researching ways to prevent cascading collapse or crisis triggered by pandemics or other events.

• Our Health Security Ph.D. program is in its recruitment phase. See more details on the Ph.D. program here and contact Tara Sell (tksell@jhu.edu), Gigi Gronvall (ggronvall@jhu.edu), and Sarah Firestone (sschne27@jhu.edu) for questions. 

Sign up for their newsletter, Health Security Decoded here.  

NTI | bio 

The NTI | bio program works to identify gaps and promote lasting systemic change to improve biotechnology governance, strengthen biosecurity and pandemic preparedness, and reduce global catastrophic biological risks.

Focus areas and projects

• We are beta testing and optimizing the Common Mechanism sequence screening tool to help industry safeguard DNA synthesis technology. We are establishing a global home for the Common Mechanism and other innovative risk reduction tools by establishing the International Biosecurity and Biosafety Initiative for Science (IBBIS). 

• We are preparing a report on safeguarding the application of artificial intelligence (AI) to engineering living systems. We are currently interviewing technical and policy leaders in AI, the life sciences, biosecurity, and related fields with the goal of developing a balanced report outlining benefits, risks, and governance options.

• We continue to prioritize building support for a UN Joint Assessment Mechanism to improve the assessment of outbreaks of unknown origin.

Publications and Reports

• We released “Benchtop DNA Synthesis Devices: Capabilities, Biosecurity Implications, and Governance,” a report which describes the current status of benchtop synthesis technology, outlines the biosecurity implications, and recommends governance actions to safeguard this technology. You can also watch the launch event here.

• We released a new digital report summarizing findings from our latest tabletop exercise, conducted in partnership with the Munich Security Conference, which was built around a fictional scenario involving a targeted attack with an engineered strain of Akhmeta virus.

Events/Opportunities

• We hosted Encouraging Congressional Action on Dual-Use Bioscience Research of Concern as part of an effort to engage US Congressional staff on effective oversight of dual-use bioscience research.

• Our annual Biosecurity Innovation and Risk Reduction Initiative (BIRRI) convened 35 participants from biotech industry, academia, biosecurity, governments, and international organizations to discuss emerging biological risks and develop practical solutions to reduce them.

• Applications for the seventh annual Next Generation for Biosecurity Competition are open now.

You can subscribe to their newsletter and follow NTI on social media for more information @NTI_WMD. Job opportunities will be posted here. Be sure to visit the newly updated website for the International Biosecurity and Biosafety Initiative for Science (IBBIS)! 

Open Philanthropy, Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness team 

Open Philanthropy’s Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness team supports efforts to strengthen disease surveillance, the governance of dual-use research, policy development, and other activities that could reduce the threat of a major global disruption.

• Renewed grant support for work by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and Nuclear Threat Initiative, respectively, to pursue activities aimed at mitigating global catastrophic biological risks.

• Provided support to the RAND Corporation to stand up a new biosecurity policy center as well as fellowships focused on biosecurity tech governance.

• Welcomed Adin Richards to the team, who is conducting research into agricultural resilience.

Looking for an Operations Associate to join our team — applications welcome!

SecureBio

SecureBio is a nonprofit research organization working on new technologies and policy proposals to delay, detect, and defend against catastrophic pandemics.

• The Nucleic Acid Observatory team is about to start an experiment featuring airplane wastewater from a major US airport, as well as samples from a wastewater treatment plant.

• The Far-UVC group is close to publishing its manuscript on safety and is exploring ways to study the efficacy of far-UVC for curbing indoor airborne pathogen transmission. To support this work, the team is hiring a Project Lead.

• The SecureDNA team continues to work apace on its gene synthesis screening software and anticipates releasing a public beta after the summer. The group is hiring a Marketing Relationship Manager to help onboard new partner companies following the beta release. 

• Policy: various team members are contributing to major efforts in the US and Europe to help mitigate biorisks from Large Language Models. The policy team is working with partners in government and industry to help de-risk upcoming AI releases.

• PPE: a report on the viability of Power-Assisted Personal Respirators (PAPR) to replace N95 masks as the go-to PPE of choice is due for release later in the summer; experimental work is ongoing to design a PAPR prototype that integrates sterilization using far-UVC.

Did you find this newsletter helpful? Do you have ideas on how we could improve it? Please fill out this short feedback form or email hello@tessa.fyi.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this newsletter do not necessarily represent those of the newsletter authors. This is an independent project conducted outside of the authors’ organizational affiliations.