🤔 Why SEA Bio?
- Addressing a career pipeline gap - Recognizing a significant career pipeline gap for early-career biosecurity researchers in Southeast Asia, SEA Bio seeks to engage and empower young professionals. The ultimate aim of the professional network will be to provide on-ramp research support and opportunities (technical and policy) to early career professionals and leave space for open research questions that have yet to be answered in the region.
- A dual approach to biosecurity: SEA Bio aims to balance a top-down and bottom-up approach to biosecurity. The top-down aspect involves foresighted planning by prioritizing scope-sensitive biosecurity and identifying critical GCBR interventions that are highly neglected and have high expected value. The bottom-up component focuses on building the baseline social and health infrastructure necessary for effectively implementing these interventions in a region that lacks awareness of, socialization to, and resources for GCBR-level interventions. This dual approach ensures that strategic planning is grounded in regional realities and that initiatives are actionable and sustainable. As researchers familiar with the regional context and connected within our individual companies within the region, SEA Bio has high counterfactual impact to opening up research and projects for scoping out this territory.
🌏 Why work on biosecurity in Southeast Asia?
- 🤖 Emerging technology risk and effect of AI x bio applications in the region: With the rapid advancement and democratization of science and technology—such as synthetic biology and artificial intelligence (AI) x bio applications —there is an increasing ability for both intentional and unintentional creation or release of harmful biological agents. While the adoption of AI around the region is still in the early stage (with the exception of Singapore), more than 70% of respondents in the region agreed that AI would be a crucial turning point that could add up to $1 trillion to the region. Further, Southeast Asia is one of the top three regions most prone to agro-terrorism through deliberate misuse of pathogens. Yet, barely any research has been done to address the potential acceleration of accidental and deliberate misuse of bio tools when paired with AI regionally.
- 🧫 The expanding biotechnology sector: The biotechnology industry in Asia is rapidly expanding, potentially heightening biorisks in the region. The Asia-Pacific synthetic biology landscape is rapidly expanding as well, projected to reach 10.9 billion USD by 2029, which signifies a substantial increase in synthetic biology activity in the region and increase of associated risks. Biofoundries (advanced biotechnology research facilities that concentrate resources, provide access to high-cost equipment, and offer expertise for product prototyping and commercial process validation) are also increasing in number across Asia.
- 📃 Neglected biosecurity policy/interventions: Despite this growing industry and the escalating biosecurity threats in the region, biosecurity remains underregulated and underexplored in the region, leaving significant gaps in prevention, detection, and response to GCBRs. This relaxed regulatory landscape means there's much more freedom for different actors to experiment with emerging technology, including engineered pathogens; there’s also more likelihood of accidental pathogen release (e.g., due to underregulated gene synthesis policies and widespread benchtop DNA synthesis devices) Recognizing these challenges, regional experts convened at a recent Southeast Asia biosecurity roundtable. They recommended establishing a Regional Research Networks for Information Exchange, enabling a more coordinated response between countries. One research area highlighted during the roundtable was creating a list of unique country-specific pathogens—such as tropical diseases, endemic pathogens, or agricultural pests specific to the region—that could cause a global catastrophe if gone unnoticed. This initiative underscores the urgent need for enhanced collaboration and information sharing to effectively mitigate GCBRs.
- 🦠 High risk of new outbreaks: Southeast Asia is home to 673.02M people with major cities being highly populated and growing rapidly. Further, the region has rich biodiversity (with frequent human-wildlife interactions) and significant agricultural activities. These factors can make SEA a hotspot for potential outbreaks and also an underprepared region for catastrophic epidemics and pandemics.
- 📶 No comprehensive biosecurity network currently addresses these challenges in Southeast Asia. While some information exchange and technological sharing partnerships have been established, they are not happening at a pace that meets the current biosecurity needs of the region. SEA Bio aims to fill this knowledge and career pipeline gap by developing region-specific biosecurity expertise and research, engaging regional organizations and early-career professionals, and fostering collaboration to mitigate GCBRs.
👀 Our plans
- Establishing a biosecurity research network, mapping interventions, and defining regional high-impact GCBR research focus in SEA: We’re beginning the initiative with a 6-month research project designed to establish a biosecurity research network, map existing interventions, and define high-impact GCBR research priorities specific to Southeast Asia. The project will be regionally focused, covering 11 countries in ASEAN, including Timor Leste.
- Future activities: Afterward, we plan to formalize interest groups to work on specific GCBR interventions based on the previous research. (E.g., we’ll have teams focusing on intervention X’s implementation in country X). Additionally, we plan to launch a Regional Early-Career Biosecurity Fellowship to support emerging professionals, bridging the gap between early and mid-career development, and funnel talent to partners like the Asia Centre for Health Security (ACHS).
👋 Our team
Founding Team:
Advisory Council:
❔How can you help us?
- 🪙 Help us fundraise: We’re currently fundraising and have applied for grants from Open Philanthropy’s “Funding for programs and events on global catastrophic risk, effective altruism, and other topics,” Effective Altruism Funds (Long-Term Future Fund and EA Infrastructure Fund), and the Center on Long-Term Risk Fund. We would really appreciate your input and support to further amplify our efforts, and make it sustainable!
- 👩👩👦👦 Connect us with your network, especially to people working on biosecurity in Asia. Biosecurity is both new and old, and it’s no different for Asia. We want to be able to re-angle the current career pipeline (on-ramps) for early career professionals who are interested in biosecurity and would like to build their skills in Asia. If you know an expert or any early career from the region, don’t hesitate to connect us!
🤝 How we can help you
- Connect you to our network of researchers who have worked/worked on:
- DNA Synthesis Screening in Asia
- Indoor Air Quality - far-UVC in Singapore
- Zoonotic Spillover in Southeast Asia
- Metagenomic Sequencing
- Antimicrobial Resistance
- Gender and Equitable Biosecurity Investment in Southeast Asia
- Learn about biosecurity in Southeast Asia: contact us to set up a chat to hear what’s been happening with us and our network working on different biosecurity efforts in the region.