The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine will establish a standing committee that will convene meetings and workshops as mechanisms to enable the national security community to identify advanced biotechnology capabilities of particular interest, discuss potential barriers or challenges to adoption, and build partnerships between the national security stakeholders and biotechnology experts across a variety of sectors and fields. Members will have opportunities to prepare white papers or other types of individually-authored papers and similar types of products toward this goal. This group will provide opportunities for ongoing discussion between national security officials, biotechnology experts, and funders from a variety of organizational sectors, scientific disciplines, and fields such as through workshops or meetings of experts. Specifically, the standing committee explores:

• The applicability of commercially available or advanced biotechnologies and life science research for addressing current or anticipated needs of different U.S. national security agencies.
• Practical or operational factors (e.g., workforce, infrastructure, policy/governance, and security considerations) needed to enable technology transition to agency use.
• Early-stage biotechnology and life science research that demonstrate promising scientific or technical capabilities for addressing national security needs.
• The innovation ecosystem needed to translate early-stage research into practical application.

Any related products from workshops or other activities would be developed by rapporteurs associated with separately approved, ad hoc planning committees for those activities. Written products will follow relevant National Academies’ review policies.