Conference: A workshop to understand the current needs for advancing living sentinel research

当前的全球大流行和未来爆发事件的风险，为我们重新思考如何监测和应对紧急威胁提供了强大的动力。一个潜在的解决方案是创建哨兵生命系统，用于检测、识别、启动和缓解紧急生物威胁。为了建立强有力的利益相关者参与并确定哨兵系统的愿景，将组织一系列活动，以制定研究路线图。该路线图将确定在真实的时间内检测和识别健康和环境威胁的基本挑战，并使用合成生物学从生物和非生物部分构建减轻这些威胁的设备。通过汇集来自不同背景和学科的研究人员，包括生物学，工程和材料，本次研讨会将从广泛的视角和专业知识中汲取经验，确保进行强有力的严格讨论，以支持制定该领域的发展路线图。拟议研讨会的目标是汇集合成生物学，材料科学和电气工程领域的领先学者，讨论创建检测，识别，启动和缓解紧急生物威胁的智能技术所需的基础知识。具体而言，它将实现四个目标。首先，在研讨会之前，将利用一个虚拟机制让不同的利益攸关方参与进来，介绍研讨会的目标，并请与会者就一系列确定的问题交流想法。这一信息将用于完善研讨会的议程和材料，以确保它能激发利益攸关方的热烈讨论。第二，将通过面对面的讲习班实现有重点的利益攸关方参与。这将涉及确定讨论框架和一系列分组会议，在这些会议上，较小的参与者小组讨论具体的主题并提供反馈。第三，为了扩大现场研讨会的参与，将使用虚拟分组会议，使远程参与者能够真实的作出贡献。这些小组将包括来自不同学科的利益攸关方，以汇集不同的观点。最后，利用会议中形成的数字笔记，参与者将被要求以文章的形式编写一份路线图文件，其中包含建议的结果，并将通过出版物向更广泛的社区传播。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The current global pandemic and the risk of future outbreak events has provided a strong motivation to rethink how we monitor and respond to emergent threats. A potential solution is to create sentinel living systems that detect, recognize, actuate, and mitigate emergent biological threats. To create strong stakeholder engagement and define a vision for sentinel systems, a series of activities will be organized that lead to the development of a research roadmap. This roadmap will frame the foundational challenges in detecting and recognizing health and environmental threats in real time and building devices from living and non-living parts that mitigate those threats using synthetic biology. By bringing together researchers from diverse backgrounds and disciplines, including biology, engineering, and materials, this workshop will draw from broad perspectives and expertise ensuring a robust and rigorous discussion that supports the development of a roadmap that advances in the field. The goal of the proposed workshop is to bring together leading scholars in synthetic biology, materials science, and electrical engineering to discuss the foundational knowledge that is required to create smart technologies that detect, recognize, actuate, and mitigate emergent biological threats. Specifically, it will accomplish four objectives. First, prior to the workshop, diverse stakeholders will be engaged using a virtual mechanism to introduce the workshop goals and ask participants to share ideas in response to a set of defined questions. This information will be used to refine the agenda and materials for the workshop to ensure that it stimulates robust stakeholder discussions. Second, focused stakeholder engagement will be accomplished using an in-person workshop. This will involve defining a frame for discussions and a series of breakout sessions where smaller groups of participants discuss and provide feedback on specific topic points. Third, to broaden the in-person workshop participation, virtual breakout sessions will be used to allow remote participants to contribute in real time. These groups will contain stakeholders from different disciplines to bring together different perspectives. Finally, using the digital notes developed through the meeting, participants will be asked to develop a roadmap document in an article form that contains the outcome of recommendations, which will be disseminated to the broader community through a publication.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.