BioRISC: Better Biosecurity

The Biosecurity Research Initiative at St. Catherine's (BioRISC) will be dedicated to achieving a safer and more secure world by sparking technical advances in biosecurity innovation, developing new approaches to detect novel disease threats, and creating a global cadre of biosecurity professionals among scientists and engineers of the future.

BioRISC uses a broad version of the term biosecurity. This extends across its uses in the fields of conservation and environmental protection, protection of human, animal and plant health against naturally occurring biological threats, and accidental releases of / unintended consequences from novel organisms, and more traditional security concerns around deliberate use of biological agents, scientific knowledge and related technologies for harmful purposes.

There are benefits to considering biological security in a comprehensive manner, as actions in the different constituent domains can have implications in others – something clearly recognised in the 2018 UK Biological Security Strategy.

The Initiative will use an innovative combination of approaches to build, integrate, and synthesise evidence, across the different domains of biosecurity. This will include fault tree analysis, mapping of intervention options, expert elicitation processes, and extension of the Conservation Evidence platform. Specific components of these activities will bring together leading scientific experts, technology developers and policy makers, to shape the biosecurity research agenda and ensure solutions are grounded in evidence.

I'm honoured to be one of the postdoctoral researchers appointed in the framework of BioRISC. I did my first postdoc in Cambridge back in 2010-2012 so it is fantastic to catch up on old friends and meet lots of fascinating new colleagues at the David Attenborough Building.

I will be working on the biological side of biosecurity, particularly addressing the following:

- Priority setting of biological invasions for the water industry.

- Using fault-trees to assess the risk of invasion of the Golden mussel into the UK.

- Tools to systematically review the evidence of management

We recently submitted our written evidence about the threat of biological invasions in the UK.

Following on, the Environmental Audit Committee will be holding an inquiry meeting on invasive species on 11th June at St. Catherine's.