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有力的动力。一个潜在的解决方案是创建哨兵生命系统，以检测、识别、驱动和减轻紧急生物威胁。为了促进利益攸关方的积极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。该路线图将确定实时检测和识别健康和环境威胁以及利用合成生物学从生物和非生物部分制造设备以减轻这些威胁方面的基本挑战。通过汇集来自不同背景和学科的研究人员，包括生物学，工程学和材料，本次研讨会将从广泛的角度和专业知识中汲取经验，确保进行有力而严谨的讨论，以支持该领域发展路线图的发展。本次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顶尖学者聚集在一起，讨论创建智能技术所需的基础知识，这些技术可以检测、识别、驱动和减轻紧急生物威胁。具体来说，它将实现四个目标。首先，在研讨会之前，不同的利益相关者将使用虚拟机制来介绍研讨会目标，并要求参与者就一系列明确的问题分享想法。这些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相关者的热烈讨论。其次，重点利益相关者的参与将通过面对面的研讨会来完成。这将包括定义一个讨论框架和一系列分组会议，在这些分组会议中，较小的参与者小组讨论并就特定的主题点提供反馈。第三，为了扩大现场研讨会的参与，将使用虚拟分组会议，允许远程参与者实时贡献。这些小组将包含来自不同学科的利益相关者，以汇集不同的观点。最后，将要求与会者利用会议制定的数字笔记，以文章形式制定路线图文件，其中包含建议的结果，并通过出版物向更广泛的社区传播。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，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.