Conference: A workshop to understand the current needs for advancing living sentinel research

William Marsh Rice University, Houston TX

Investigators

Abstract

The current global pandemic and the risk of future outbreak events has provided a strong motivation to rethink how we monitor and respond to emergent threats. A potential solution is to create sentinel living systems that detect, recognize, actuate, and mitigate emergent biological threats. To create strong stakeholder engagement and define a vision for sentinel systems, a series of activities will be organized that lead to the development of a research roadmap. This roadmap will frame the foundational challenges in detecting and recognizing health and environmental threats in real time and building devices from living and non-living parts that mitigate those threats using synthetic biology. By bringing together researchers from diverse backgrounds and disciplines, including biology, engineering, and materials, this workshop will draw from broad perspectives and expertise ensuring a robust and rigorous discussion that supports the development of a roadmap that advances in the field. The goal of the proposed workshop is to bring together leading scholars in synthetic biology, materials science, and electrical engineering to discuss the foundational knowledge that is required to create smart technologies that detect, recognize, actuate, and mitigate emergent biological threats. Specifically, it will accomplish four objectives. First, prior to the workshop, diverse stakeholders will be engaged using a virtual mechanism to introduce the workshop goals and ask participants to share ideas in response to a set of defined questions. This information will be used to refine the agenda and materials for the workshop to ensure that it stimulates robust stakeholder discussions. Second, focused stakeholder engagement will be accomplished using an in-person workshop. This will involve defining a frame for discussions and a series of breakout sessions where smaller groups of participants discuss and provide feedback on specific topic points. Third, to broaden the in-person workshop participation, virtual breakout sessions will be used to allow remote participants to contribute in real time. These groups will contain stakeholders from different disciplines to bring together different perspectives. Finally, using the digital notes developed through the meeting, participants will be asked to develop a roadmap document in an article form that contains the outcome of recommendations, which will be disseminated to the broader community through a publication. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.