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.
Status: The original tool has been built as Cliver (ACX grant). Extensions are still welcome.
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.
Today this check is ad hoc googling. A good second-stage signal makes customer screening faster and fairer.
Output: A contribution to an open customer-screening tool.
Read the README and contributing guide, and get the project running locally.
Pick one small, well-defined piece of work (look for “good first issue”).
Say on the issue that you are working on it, then open a draft pull request early.
Ask for feedback while it is still small; respond to review quickly.
Write a short post about what you built and learned.
All steps done
Share what you made, then try another project. The PDF version has room for notes.
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.
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.
