Biotech & Synthetic Biology

DARPA’s role and investments in defense-related research and development (R&D), including biological defense, has potential significance for the science and technology available to address the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and any future biological threats. In 2018, the  Biological Technologies Office (BTO) of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) …

“Between 2011 and 2018, WHO tracked 1483 epidemic events in 172 countries. Epidemic-prone diseases such as influenza, severe acute respirator syndrome (SARS), Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), Ebola, Zika, plague, yellow fever and others are harbingers of a new era of high-impact, potentially fast-spreading outbreaks that are more frequently detected …

Since the development of the field effect transistor in 1920s, the electronics industry has focused on high speed and large capacity devices such as microprocessors and random access memories. However, the recent emergence of personalized and mobile electronics has diversified the research efforts from performance-oriented research to human-friendly topics. Conventional bulky …

Synthetic biology is the application of science, technology and engineering to facilitate and accelerate the design, manufacture and/or modification of genetic materials in living organisms, as defined by the  European Commission. It envisions the redesign of natural biological systems for greater efficiency, as well as create new organisms as well as …

Unmanned aerial vehicle technology is advancing rapidly, and drones are getting smaller by the day. Militaries are now employing Micro, Mini & Nano UAVs into their operations. They provide situational awareness to a small group of soldiers by flying several stories above them for 10-20 minutes at a time before …

Major infectious diseases, like COVID-19, often go undetected until they spread. Spotting the problem in a community isn’t easy, in part because infectious disease detection, which is the foundation for surveillance and contact tracing, can take hours, if not days. Compounding the problem is that traditional detection assays are designed …

Lab-on-chip  is an integrated miniaturized device  that  allows researchers to perform all the operations  from sample collection to final analysis onto the same chip. Theoretically, LOC technology has the potential to carry out almost any laboratory procedure on a miniaturized scale. This could range from DNA sequencing and biochemical detection …

According to the University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism Database, there were a total of 143 attacks – 35 biological, 95 chemical, and 13 radiological – using CBRN weapons across the world from 1970 to 2014. The relative ease with which malicious actors could obtain many of the materials and know-how …