An ad hoc committee with significant international membership will be organized by the NRC to:

• Plan an international workshop to survey key trends in areas of science & technology (S&T) that might be potentially relevant to the development of new or more deadly biological weapons and/or to developments in detection, diagnostics, therapeutics, or vaccines that could affect potential prevention and response to biological attacks. The developments in science discussed at the workshop are likely to be in areas such as immunology, neuroscience, synthetic biology, aerosol and other controlled delivery mechanisms, or others; the specific S&T areas and trends to be discussed during the workshop will be selected by the committee.
• Prepare a report of the workshop that would provide findings, based on the consensus of the committee, about the state of the science in the topics discussed at the workshop. The report will also explore potential implications for the Biological Weapons Convention as an independent input from the scientific community to the treaty’s 7th review conference in 2011. The report would not make recommendations about actions to address any of the potential implications. In advance of the final report, a brief, staff-authored summary (Type 3) will be produced as a stand-alone document to provide a factual overview of the technical material presented by the speakers.