Independent biosecurity researcher

We provided $109,000 to an independent biosecurity researcher to improve function-based screening in the nucleic acid synthesis industry. This researcher will create benchmark datasets of AI-generated sequences to test screening methods and evaluate AI models for predicting biological functions. In addition, they will facilitate conversations with nucleic acid synthesis providers, screening tool providers, the biological design tool community, and biosecurity experts to develop and integrate more robust function-based screening approaches capable of detecting engineered and AI-designed biological threats.