GCBR Organization Updates, June 2026
Updates from Active Site, Asia Center for Health Security, IBBIS and SecureBio
This edition is a little shorter than usual but still packed with updates and opportunities, including two fellowships and a biosecurity course with deadlines before June 7!
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
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.