Biosecurity group Discussion Session
Location details: this time, we are trialing out meeting in-person both in Basel and Zurich! Choose any location that suits you best:
Basel: BSS D65.2 (under the ground floor bridge, near student workplaces)
Zurich: RoomY35-F-08a at UZH Irchel Campus, Winterthurerstrasse 196
A discussion session focused on Spiez CONVERGENCE Report 2024. It presents the overview of the 6th CONVERGENCE conference about latest developments at biology and chemistry intersection in context of arms control.
The key most relevant sections are Implications and Conclusions + Threat-Agnostic Biodefence, but we'll also talk about Precise Editing; Digitalisation, Automation and AI ; DNA Origami and BioFire system mentioned in the 2024 Spiez lab report here:
https://www.spiezlab.admin.ch/en/berichte-und-en
After an overview covering the above topics, we plan to discuss the following questions:
- What's one topic from the report that you find the most promising and one that is most risky for misuse?
- State actors vs individuals actors: can we dismiss threats from one or the other?
- Risk mitigation: awareness-raising vs self-regulation vs government intervention
- Threat-agnostic defense: how can we work towards identifying the finite number of ways a host can respond?
- One-health approach: what about biosecurity risks for animals and plants?
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