Advancing the study, address, and oversight of science and technology affecting public safety and international security.

The Institute for Biodefense Research is a not-for-profit 501(c) 3 organization established to study and analyze current and near-term risks and threats to United States’ and global biosecurity, biosafety, and public health. The Institute evaluates, informs, and develops methods and metrics for biodefense preparedness, guidance, readiness, oversight, and response.

Working with national, regional, and global partners, the Institute engages multidisciplinary approaches to define, assess, quantify, mitigate, and prevent risks and threats to biosecurity, and public health and safety. Current collaborations in these projects include the Department of Defense; Department of Homeland Security; Department of Justice; Department of Health and Human Services; Department of Commerce National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST); Department of Agriculture; and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

The Institute can provide interdisciplinary subject matter expertise to consult with and guide governmental, public, and private institutions and organizations on emerging issues of biosecurity.

Primary Areas of Focus

 

Current and emerging techniques and tools that can pose both non-kinetic and kinetic risks and threat to public, national, and global safety, security and health; including the development, use and oversight of:

  • biological and chemical weapons
  • nano materials and nano engineering
  • big data, cyber technology and biopsychosocio-economic information
  • artificial intelligence

Core Efforts

 

Reliable, relevant rigorous multidisciplinary analyses.

Expansion of scientific knowledge and methods to support the research, intelligence, national defense and public health communities.

Improved understanding of current, intermediate and the long-term probabilities, possibilities, and potential risks, threats, and harms to national and global biological safety, security and defense.

Support, revision and development of improved approaches to tactical and strategic preparedness, readiness, and response to current and evolving biosecurity risks and threats.

New episode of The Convergence podcast

This week’s episode of The Convergence podcast welcomes back our very own “James Gang” — proclaimed Mad Scientists Dr. James Giordano and Dr. James Canton — discussing a topic featured prominently in recent news stories and Congressional testimony:  Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, or UAPs, now referred to by Drs. Giordano and Canton as Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena.

Read More