Detection overview

Detection deep-dive

Option 1: Country-specific biosurveillance

Option 2: Metagenomic sequencing technology roadmap

Option 3: Rapid individual testing

AI x Biosecurity

Prevention overview

Prevention deep-dive

Option 1: AI safeguards

Option 2: DNA synthesis screening

Option 3: Preventing irrevocable bioweapon uplift

Option 4: Governance of risky biological research

Intro

The history of pandemics and bioweapons

The future of pandemics and bioweapons?

Towards a pandemic-proof world

[Optional] Biology 101 for biosecurity

[Optional] Biosecurity overviews

Rapid MCM overview

Rapid MCM development deep-dive

Option 1: Faster R&D

Option 2: Clinical trials innovation

Option 3: Better financing and procurement

Option 4: Faster manufacturing and delivery

Your next steps

Choose your focus

Biosecurity project ideas

Create your 1-pager

Next steps: Technical fellowships

Next steps: Policy fellowships

Next steps: Career resources

Next steps: Programs

NPI overview

NPI deep-dive

Option 1: Pandemic-proof PPE

Option 2: Biohardening indoor spaces

Pandemics have been among history's deadliest disasters. The Black Death killed half of Europe. The 1918 flu claimed up to 100 million lives. HIV has killed 33 million people. COVID-19 showed that despite modern medicine, we remain vulnerable to novel pathogens.

Beyond natural pandemics, some actors have weaponised biological knowledge. In the 20th century, multiple nation states built biological weapons programmes. Terrorist groups and lone actors have pursued bioweapons. Today, rapid advances in AI and synthetic biology are creating new opportunities to engineer dangerous pathogens.

Yet our vulnerability isn't inevitable. Just as cities once prone to devastating fires are now largely protected, we can build robust defences against pandemic threats.

This course takes seriously the warnings from many leading researchers and governments that AI could enable pandemics considerably worse than COVID, and that we must take steps to prepare. That said, many of the interventions we discuss would also be useful for countering naturally-arising pandemics and advancing global health.

In the first unit, you'll explore the history of pandemics and bioweapons programmes, and examine how emerging technologies like AI and synthetic biology are changing the threat landscape.

Throughout the rest of the course, you'll explore the defensive layers in detail, from preventing engineered threats and detecting outbreaks early, to rapidly deploying countermeasures:

**Unit 2 - Preventing Engineered Pandemics:** Make creating a bioweapon much harder, ideally impossible, by concentrating layered defenses at the highest-leverage chokepoints from idea to deployment.      
                              
**Unit 3 - Detecting Early Infections:** Detect novel pandemic-potential pathogens as early as possible. The sooner we know an outbreak is happening, whether stealthy, fast-spreading, or environmental, the more options we have to stop it.              
                                          
**Unit 4 - Blocking Transmission:** Make person-to-person transmission low enough that outbreaks don't have to become pandemics, pandemics don't have to break society, and policymakers don't have to choose between doing nothing and shutting everything down.              
  
**Unit 5 - Exiting the Pandemic:** Vaccines and therapeutics are how we end catastrophic pandemics. The faster we develop, test, manufacture, and deploy them, the fewer people die before we do.

By the end, you’ll develop your own action plan for contributing to biosecurity.


**Imagine the year is 2050 and the world is much more pandemic-proof than it is today. What kinds of technologies, policies and organisations exist, and how might we get there?**

We encourage you to use your existing expertise, as well as taking inspiration from the ‘Pandemic Prevention as Fire-Fighting’ article or other research. 

This is only a starting point and we don’t expect comprehensive answers – use this as a brainstorming exercise to think of a broad range of ideas. We’ll dig deeper into some of these interventions later in the course.

Things you might want to consider:

**What could a day in your life look like?**
- What technologies might you interact with that prevent you catching or transmitting pathogens?

**What could we copy from emergency preparedness and response in other settings (fire, war, cyber etc.)?**
- Are there analogous technologies, policies or organisations in those areas that we could build in the biosecurity space?

Consider grouping your ideas into outbreak prevention, detection and response (note these categories aren’t always clear-cut!).


Envisaging a pandemic-proof world

Biosecurity needs far more than just biologists. It needs policymakers, engineers, data scientists, entrepreneurs, communicators and many others.

Whatever your background, we're very excited that you've made it to this course! We put together some resources to help you understand the basics of biology that will be most useful for the rest of the course.

**The resources below are here for you to work through in your own time before the course starts, or to come back to if you want a reminder.**

The resources cover 5 main topics:
- Cell biology
- Molecular biology
- Microbiology
- Immunology
- Epidemiology


These are great (and long!) overviews of biosecurity. Recommended reading if you'd like to dig deeper.


Biosecurity

The future of pandemics and bioweapons?

Resources (1 hr)