Will the project "Stanford Biosecurity Center" receive any funding from the Clearer Thinking Regranting program run by ClearerThinking.org?

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Below, you can find some selected quotes from the public copy of the application. The text beneath each heading was written by the applicant. Alternatively, you can click here to see the entire public portion of their application.

In brief, why does the applicant think we should we fund this project?

Biosecurity Legislative Boot Camp: Congressional funding and support for pandemic preparedness, biodefense, and biosecurity monitoring falls short of addressing the scope of the threat and of fully utilizing available technology and capabilities (e.g., vaccine production; BARDA; wastewater pathogen sampling). Bringing these issues to the attention of policymakers and those who directly advise them could result in increased attention, and ultimately better-informed, faster, and concerted legislative action. The boot camp format has previously been used to increase awareness of policy solutions to cybersecurity problems and to build a network among congressional staffers and research-affiliated experts; this network has resulted in ongoing consultative opportunities and participants’ involvement in crafting cybersecurity policy, which I expect would translate to the domain of biosecurity with the involvement of appropriate personnel and experts in a similarly formatted program.   

Dual-Use Capabilities of Protein Folding Tools: Recent advancements in AI- and ML-enabled molecular modeling and simulation have led to breakthroughs in the ability to predict protein folding and bound structures of multiple proteins (e.g., ligand-receptor docking and antibody binding). While some work has been done on the potential applications of these capabilities to chemical design, and the dual-use nature of this work, very little has been done thus far to explore the current and near-term capabilities of protein-folding simulation tools to enable the directed design of pathogens. It is important to know the capabilities of these tools to design mechanisms of safety and review for their use, and to predict potential misuse for the purpose of planning for or mitigating the results of that misuse.

Here's the mechanism by which the applicant expects their project will achieve positive outcomes.

Bootcamp: As with previous bootcamps, I expect that sustained and intensive engagement with these issues and a small community of both fellow staffers and experts will do two things: heighten the saliency of these topics and issues for the staffers, and create informal networking relationships and bonds between participants (both among staffers, and between staffers and experts) that lead to consultation and collaboration in the near future. The small, informal, and off-the-record nature of the bootcamps tends to build camaraderie better than a formal public conference, and staffers feel important for having been purposely selected to attend, causing them to view their fellow attendees as being similarly important, and therefore worthy of working with in the future. 

Research: Publication and dissemination of research about dual-use capabilities tends to attract the attention of regulators and researchers (see, e.g., the attention paid to Filippa Lentzos et al.’s recent publication on dual-use AI-enabled drug discovery - https://www.nature.com/articles/s42256-022-00465-9). Presentations and talks to relevant groups (nonproliferation groups, university departments and programs, State Department CTR) are also good mechanisms for propagating this type of work and spurring the development of regulatory guidelines, but the research and computational work has to be done first to demonstrate the reality of the threat.

How much funding are they requesting?

Bootcamp: $130,225

Research: $6,000/month stipend for 12 months - $72,000. 

Total: $130,225 + $72,000 + 8% overhead: $218,403

Overview bootcamp budget:

Flights, transportation to/from campus, and accommodations for ~30 staffers

• Assuming 30 participants, $58,500 total

Room reservations, event services, waste management

• $5,500 total

Breakfast (2x), Lunch (3x), and Dinner (2x) catering

• Assuming 30 participants, $10,575 total

Staff time (facilitator/organizer, logistics coordinator)

• Assume 80 hours each for prep for logistics and organizer

• 12 hours per day for three days each for the event

• 10 hours each for post-event work (reimbursements, communication)

• Assume $75/hour, four staff, $32,400

Stipends for travel and time for visiting speakers

• $18,500 total

Printed materials

• $2,250 total

Field trip (if possible)

• $2,500 total

Here you can review the entire public portion of the application (which contains a lot more information about the applicant and their project):

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Eh4C5ThTWTR0JP-oUXkWbFrmjo9h3XP4DnXQODP8pso/edit

Sep 20, 3:45pm:

Close date updated to 2022-10-01 2:59 am