Current Projects

Red Teaming Global Catastrophic Biological Risks

As part of the Center’s continued effort to raise awareness of and offer policy recommendations for Global Catastrophic Biological Risks (GCBRs), this project will use “red teaming” methodologies to identify and analyze new scientific advances and technologies that have the potential to be deliberately misused to create a biological weapon.

Numerous firms in the public and private sectors benefit from red teaming exercises that help identify threats and generate new ideas to protect vulnerabilities by challenging exercise participants to view a problem through the lens of an adversary. With this charge, dozens of scientists from diverse fields will engage in three red teaming exercises at the Center’s offices in Baltimore. Each exercise will feature a different scenario and challenge participants to use the red teaming methodology to propose innovative ideas that reveal the GCBR potential of biotechnology.

Vulnerabilities identified during the exercises will then be analyzed and validated to inform the Center’s development of technical and policy solutions that protect emerging biotechnologies for their benefits while minimizing the possibility of misuse.

Project team lead: Gigi Kwik Gronvall, PhD

Project team: Amesh Adalja, MD; Caitlin Rivers, PhD, MPH; Lisa Zhang; Christopher Hurtado, MHS; Tom Inglesby, MD

Project supported by: Open Philanthropy Project

Resources:

• Synthetic Biology: Safety, Security, and Promise, by Gigi Kwik Gronvall, PhD