Companies make synthetic DNA to order. Screening those orders and the customers who place them is one of the main defences against engineered pandemics. Explain how it works and where the gaps are.
Dual-use risk. Some biosecurity work can be misused. Work with an experienced mentor, keep anything you publish high-level, and ask before sharing detailed material.
DNA screening sits where biology, AI and policy meet, and decision-makers often lack a clear, short explanation. A good one-page explanation is useful to them.
Output: A one-page explainer with a simple diagram.
Read Asimov Press’s “Is that DNA dangerous?”. Write the core idea in one sentence.
Sketch the steps from a customer placing an order to DNA being shipped. Mark where screening happens.
Note where things could slip through (for example, unscreened providers, benchtop DNA printers, or checking the customer rather than just the sequence). Look at what SecureDNA and IBBIS work on.
Explain what screening is, why it matters, how it works, and one open problem. Keep it high-level: no detail that would help someone evade screening.
Ask someone outside biology to read it. Then share it with your group.
All steps done
Share what you made, then try another project. The PDF version has room for notes.
Compare “know your customer” and other frameworks for making DNA ordering more secure, drawing on what finance and other industries already do.
Expand a handful of existing case studies into 25–40 profiles of legitimate and concerning customers, including historical cases of people who ordered dangerous biological material.
Given a researcher’s ORCID ID, return the organisms they have published on, so a DNA synthesis company can quickly check whether a flagged order fits the customer’s research history.
The field lacks a friendly wiki. Pick one concept (far-UVC, DNA screening, elastomeric respirators, metagenomic surveillance) and write the clear, well-sourced page you wish existed.
Write a short, jargon-free explainer of one AI safety idea (reward hacking, sycophancy, compute governance, DNA screening) for someone outside tech.
