Horizon Civil Security: Bioterrorism Prevention

Reviewing the bioterrorism risk created by synthetic biology's growing accessibility — cheaper lab equipment, DIY biohacking and community labs, gene-editing and sequencing tools, and public genetic databases — to work out what needs monitoring, what needs regulating, and how. Proposals bring together a consortium spanning policy makers, researchers, biotech companies and security practitioners, both to do that analysis and to raise awareness inside the scientific community of how synthetic biology research can be misused. Funded projects also set out how they'll engage the Europol Innovation Lab, and the EU Drugs Agency if the work touches drug-related issues. Activities are expected to reach TRL 4-5 by the end of the project.