Analysis of the first genetic engineering attribution challenge.

The ability to identify the designer of engineered biological sequences-termed genetic engineering attribution (GEA)-would help ensure due credit for biotechnological innovation, while holding designers accountable to the communities they affect. Here, we present the results of the first Genetic Engineering Attribution Challenge, a public data-science competition to advance GEA techniques. Top-scoring teams dramatically outperformed previous models at identifying the true lab-of-origin of engineered plasmid sequences, including an increase in top-1 and top-10 accuracy of 10 percentage points.

Using prediction polling to harness collective intelligence for disease forecasting.

Background: The global spread of COVID-19 has shown that reliable forecasting of public health related outcomes is important but lacking.

Methods: We report the results of the first large-scale, long-term experiment in crowd-forecasting of infectious-disease outbreaks, where a total of 562 volunteer participants competed over 15 months to make forecasts on 61 questions with a total of 217 possible answers regarding 19 diseases.

Results: Consistent with the "wisdom of crowds" phenomenon, we found that crowd forecasts aggregated using best-practice adaptive algorithms are well-calibrated, accurate, timely, and outperform all individual forecasters.

COVID-19 and the gain of function debates: Improving biosafety measures requires a more precise definition of which experiments would raise safety concerns.

The COVID-19 pandemic has rekindled debates about gain-of-function experiments. This is an opportunity to clearly define safety risks and appropriate countermeasures.

The value proposition of the Global Health Security Index.

Infectious disease outbreaks pose major threats to human health and security. Countries with robust capacities for preventing, detecting and responding to outbreaks can avert many of the social, political, economic and health system costs of such crises. The Global Health Security Index (GHS Index)-the first comprehensive assessment and benchmarking of health security and related capabilities across 195 countries-recently found that no country is sufficiently prepared for epidemics or pandemics.

Current State of Mass Vaccination Preparedness and Operational Challenges in the United States, 2018-2019.

Mass vaccination is a crucial public health intervention during outbreaks or pandemics for which vaccines are available. The US government has sponsored the development of medical countermeasures, including vaccines, for public health emergencies; however, federally supported programs, including the Public Health and Emergency Preparedness program and Cities Readiness Initiative, have historically emphasized antibiotic pill dispensing over mass vaccination. While mass vaccination and pill dispensing programs share similarities, they also have fundamental differences that require dedicated preparedness efforts to address.

iGEM and the Biotechnology Workforce of the Future.

An important factor in growing the US bioeconomy is recruiting and training its future workforce. Other science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields have relied on diverse educational opportunities for recruitment, including prestigious high school and collegiate competitions. For genetic engineering and synthetic biology, there are very few competitions; they include the Biodesign Competition and the much larger and scientifically focused International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition.