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重新思考我们如何监测和应对新出现的威胁提供了强大的动力。一个潜在的解决方案是创建能够检测、识别、启动和缓解紧急生物威胁的前哨生命系统。为了建立强有力的利益相关者参与并定义哨兵系统的愿景，将组织一系列活动，以制定研究路线图。这一路线图将勾勒出在实时检测和识别健康和环境威胁以及利用合成生物学制造利用生物和非生物部分缓解这些威胁的设备方面的基本挑战。通过将来自不同背景和学科的研究人员聚集在一起，包括生物学、工程学和材料，这次研讨会将从广泛的视角和专业知识中吸取教训，确保开展有力和严格的讨论，支持制定在该领域取得进展的路线图。拟议研讨会的目标是将合成生物学、材料科学和电气工程领域的领先学者聚集在一起，讨论创建检测、识别、驱动和缓解紧急生物威胁的智能技术所需的基础知识。具体地说，它将实现四个目标。首先，在研讨会之前，不同的利益攸关方将利用虚拟机制介绍研讨会的目标，并要求与会者就一系列明确的问题交流想法。这些信息将被用来完善研讨会的议程和材料，以确保它鼓励利益攸关方进行积极的讨论。其次，将通过面对面研讨会来实现关注利益相关者的参与。这将包括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并就特定的主题点提供反馈。第三，为了扩大面对面研讨会的参与，将使用虚拟分组会议，使远程参与者能够实时做出贡献。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，使用通过会议开发的数字笔记，与会者将被要求以文章的形式制定一份路线图文件，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智力优势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.