GCBR Organization Updates - May 2024
Updates from UNIDIR, Scowcroft Institute, Effective Giving, Council on Strategic Risks, CLTR, CEPI, and Blueprint Biosecurity
Welcome to our fourth newsletter of updates from organizations working to reduce global catastrophic biological risks (GCBRs). In this issue:
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:
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
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