Project ideas for biosecurity and pandemic preparedness – BlueDot Impact

Project ideas for biosecurity and pandemic preparedness

By Will Saunter (Published on July 18, 2024)

This is a list of project ideas in biosecurity and pandemic preparedness for participants on our Biosecurity Fundamentals: Pandemics course.

You are encouraged to come up with a project idea yourself: the process of trying to do so will likely serve as useful experience for thinking through and prioritising biosecurity work.

However, we have also prepared a list of projects or research questions that might be interesting, or serve as inspiration for you to generate your own ideas. If picking something from this list, feel free to adapt it to suit your particular skills or interests!

Project categories

To help guide your project ideation, we have suggested the following five categories of projects for which we will be offering prizes:

  • Simple explainers
  • Novel research (qualitative)
  • Novel research (quantitative)
  • COVID-19 analysis
  • Build a thing

 

Simple explainers

  • What? A blogpost, interview, graphic[1] or video that clearly explains a concept or technology in biosecurity or pandemic preparedness.
  • Why? There is a lot of good research out there that is jargon-heavy and difficult to understand[2]. By distilling this information into a simple explainer, you will improve your own understanding of the topic, as well as helping others who want to learn about it.
  • Examples: 
    • My colleague Adam has written a blog post explaining the CRISPR-based diagnostic technologies SHERLOCK and DETECTR[3].
    • What was the RECOVERY trial, and how could we replicate this model for future pandemics?

 

Novel research (qualitative)

  • What? A blogpost or interview that aims to answer a novel question in biosecurity or pandemic preparedness. 
  • Why? Pandemic preparedness is a very broad field, and there are many questions which haven’t even been asked, let alone answered. Remember, novel research doesn’t need to be groundbreaking! It could just come from asking a very specific question or applying your existing experience from a different field.

 

Novel research (quantitative)

  • What? Epidemiological modelling, cost-benefit or some other kind of quantitative analysis that aims to answer a novel question in biosecurity or pandemic preparedness. We recommend only doing this type of project if you already have relevant experience for the type of quantitative analysis you are doing.
  • Why? Pandemic preparedness is a very broad field, and there are many questions which haven’t even been asked, let alone answered. Remember, novel research doesn’t need to be groundbreaking! It could just come from asking a very specific question or using your existing experience from a different field.
  • Examples:
    • How many metagenomic sequencing “sentinel sites” would we need to detect ~all pandemic outbreaks globally within 48 hours?[4]
    • A cost-benefit analysis of installing a Corsi-Rosenthal box in every office in a specified region.

 

COVID-19 analysis

  • What? A simple explainer or piece of novel research focussed on learning lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • Why? We’ve had a warning shot of what a severe pandemic looks like in our globalised modern world, and how prepared we currently are to deal with it. There is a huge amount of data out there, and way more we should be learning from this.
  • Examples:
    • Country-by-country comparison of government communication strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic.
    • How did different countries support wages during the COVID-19 pandemic? Similar to this explainer from Institute for Government.
    • What can we learn from Operation Warp Speed and how could we apply this to other diseases? Similar to this article from Institute for Progress.

 

Build a thing

  • What? Build an interactive tool or physical product which is relevant for biosecurity or pandemic preparedness.
  • Why? Biosecurity needs more entrepreneurs! Prototyping and iterating a product is a great way to start developing this skill.

 

Project ideas

The following longlist of ideas is a living document that will be expanded and refined over time. At the moment this is quite rough – many of these ideas could do with more work to clarify the specific question the project is trying to answer and/or narrow the scope. We welcome any feedback on the existing ideas and suggestions for new ones!

As well as picking one of these ideas ‘off-the-shelf’, we hope this list serves as inspiration for you to generate your own ideas. If picking something from this list, feel free to adapt it to suit your particular skills or interests!

Preventing patient zero

Preventing zoonotic spillover

Roadmap for Reducing Zoonotic Spillover Risk

Choose one of Neil Vora's five key interventions to prevent zoonotic spillover.

  1. Research and summarise:
    • What the intervention means in practice
    • Evidence for how it reduces zoonotic spillover risk
    • Estimated impact on risk reduction
  2. Narrow your focus:
    • Select a specific aspect of the intervention
    • Choose a particular country or region to apply it
  3. Create a roadmap:
    • Outline steps to implement your focused intervention in the specific region
    • Who are the key stakeholders?

Resources:

 

H5N1

Research any of the following questions on H5N1 (or come up with your own!):

  • What is currently being done in [specific region] to prevent spillover of H5N1?
  • What is the current state of H5N1 vaccine stockpiles in [specific region]?
    • When were the doses in the current stockpile manufactured?
    • How many doses do they have?
    • Where are they stored?
    • Who is responsible for replenishing them?
    • Some of the above information may be confidential and hard to find. You could interview somebody about what kind of stockpiling information is confidential and why.
  • How reliant is the influenza vaccine supply chain on chicken eggs? 
    • How much of an issue would this be in an H5N1 pandemic that infects chickens?
    • What are the best ways to remove chicken eggs from the vaccine supply chain?
  • Finland has started vaccinating poultry workers against H5N1.
    • Are there plans to do this in your country? If not, why not?
    • Should we be vaccinating all at-risk humans against all potential zoonotic diseases? 
  • Could we vaccinate all susceptible farm animals against H5N1?
    • If not, why not? What’s the blocker to doing this?
    • Are there delivery mechanisms that could make it more cost effective to vaccinate farm animals (e.g. spray vaccination)?
    • How could we incentivise relevant stakeholders (e.g. vets, farmers, rural communities, local governments, etc.) to vaccinate the animals against these threats?

 

Impact of animal welfare interventions on zoonotic spillover risk

  • Research a range of interventions to improve animal welfare in farms. What effect do these interventions have on the risk of zoonotic spillover?

 

Preventing laboratory-acquired infections

Biosafety

  • Read through and summarise the key takeaways from the WHO’s recently updated laboratory biosecurity guidance
    • Determine an audience that should be aware of this guidance but may not have read the full document. Present the guidance in a way that is more digestible for that audience.

 

Oversight of ePPP research and DURC

  • Read through and summarise the key takeaways from the new US Policy for Oversight of DURC and ePPPs
  • What are the organisations and regulations that oversee ePPP research and DURC in your country? 
  • Investigate what research is taking place in the closest BSL-4 lab to you, and evaluate how dangerous that might be from a global pandemic perspective.
    • What pathogens are they researching?
    • What precautions are they taking to reduce risk?
    • What rules do they have to comply with?
    • What are the potential benefits of their research?
    • What did it take for them to get verified to do this research?

 

Preventing bioweapon development and release

Biological Weapons Convention

Project ideas coming soon

 

Intelligence

  • Are there any organisations doing OSINT monitoring for bioweapon threats?
    • If no, then propose a body that could do this and how it might operate

 

DNA Synthesis Regulation

  • What can we learn from financial regulations for DNA synthesis screening?
    • What is the state of the art in customer due diligence (CDD) and know your customer (KYC)?
    • What is the state of the art in transparency registers (e.g. Cifas) and how could you apply this to DNA synthesis screening?
  • Benchtop synthesis machines
    • How likely are these to become the dominant method for DNA synthesis, and if so, how does this change the priorities for DNA synthesis screening?
    • Which features would mail-order synthesis have to have to crowd desktop synthesis out of the market? (e.g. cheap, fast, high quality)
    • How feasible is on-chip governance for benchtop synthesis machines?

Bioengineering detection and attribution

Project ideas coming soon

Detecting and containing early infections

Detection

Metagenomic sequencing

  • What is the current state of [insert country]’s wastewater monitoring systems post-COVID? 
    • What infrastructure still exists? 
    • Which pathogens are they monitoring for?
    • What technology are they using to monitor pathogens?
    • Could they be adapted for early detection of novel pathogens?
    • What is their funding structure/business model? 
    • What type of staff do they need to operate them?
    • What open-source tools do they use?
    • What standards exist to ensure the data collected is interoperable with other tools? 
    • What are their constraints? 
  • How cheap would metagenomic sequencing have to be to test for all known pathogens in everyone who comes into a hospital/a GP/at home every day?
    • Based on current trends in DNA seq costs, when will we reach that cost and how should we prepare for it (what other infrastructure would we need)?
  • How many metagenomic sequencing “sentinel sites” would be needed to detect ~all pandemic outbreaks globally within 48 hours? 
    • e.g. one in every town >1000 people? every city with >1M people? 
    • How many sampling sites are needed in each location?

Loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP)

CRISPR-based diagnostics

  • Write simple explainers of SHERLOCK and DETECTR.
  • When are we likely to see CRISPR-based diagnostics widely used?
    • What are the bottlenecks to getting there?
    • Reach out to Sherlock Biosciences or other companies to find out more!

Digital detection

Project ideas coming soon

Containment

  • Could the world have pursued zero COVID?
    • At what point in time did this become infeasible?
  • What is the latest on Bill Gates’ GERM team? Reach out to the BMGF to ask about this?
  • What exercises should local regions be doing to practise containing novel pathogen outbreaks?

Government pandemic response

  • COVID inquiries
    • Many countries have conducted COVID inquiries (e.g. Singapore, UK)
    • Take one recommendation from your country’s inquiry (e.g. UK’s here), and build a detailed roadmap for how you would implement it
  • How did different countries support wages during the COVID-19 pandemic? Similar to this explainer from Institute for Government.
  • What can we learn from Operation Warp Speed and how could we apply this to other diseases? Similar to this article from Institute for Progress.
  • Communications
    • How did Government communications strategies differ during COVID? 
      • Perhaps interview people from different countries
    • What were some of the biggest comms mistakes made around the world and how did they happen? How could we avoid similar mistakes in a future pandemic?
    • What legislation could you use in [insert country] to prohibit misinformation during a public health emergency?

Emerging tech to strengthen pandemic response

Vaccines

Project ideas coming soon

Therapeutics

  • Write an article explaining the RECOVERY trial or the WHO Solidarity trial
    • How we could replicate this model for future pandemics?
    • Build a roadmap for a shared platform to run all clinical trials on.
      • This could have huge benefits for general global health, as well as pandemic response

 

Indoor air quality

  • Far-UVC
    • Many excellent research questions in this post
    • Explore potential business models to drive the widespread adoption of Far-UVC.
      • Possible areas/customers you could explore
        • Hospitals
        • Workplaces
        • Schools and Universities
        • Laboratories
        • Factory farms
    • Why are KrCl lamps so expensive?
    • How much does far-UV degrade plastics?
  • Other UV
    • What is the state of the art and uptake of in-duct GUV? 
      • Is this something that could be built into a Corsi-Rosenthal Box setup for cheap air filtration?
      • How effective are portable GUV air purifiers on the market (e.g. this one)?
  • Corsi-Rosenthal boxes
    • Conduct a cost/benefit analysis of installing one in every room in your workplace (possibly an interactive one in Squiggle).
    • How effective are they at reducing pathogen transmission?

 

PPE

Project ideas coming soon

Footnotes

  1. Biorender is a great tool for making biological visualisations.

  2. You may have found this yourself with some of the resources in the course. As course designers, we frequently found it frustrating that there wasn’t anything better-written on a specific topic.

  3. This took him roughly 4 hours (2 hours of research, 2 hours of writing). Although he is a speedy writer, we would expect you to produce at least double this output over the course of 20 hours in the Project Phase.

    You could produce multiple explainers of this length, or one explainer that goes into more detail.

  4. This project may benefit from a narrower scope initially, such as focussing on a specific city or country.

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