Will the project "Center for Biorisk Research" receive receive any funding from the Clearer Thinking Regranting program run by ClearerThinking.org?

Below, you can find some selected quotes from the public copy of the application. The text beneath each heading was written by the applicant. Alternatively, you can click here to see the entire public portion of their application.

Why the applicant thinks we should fund this project

The project has potential to achieve a significant impact with comparatively low barriers to entry, since biological weapons have known potential for mass destruction of human life, but biological arms control is understudied. Open source data methods that are being widely applied to nuclear non-proliferation, for example, have not yet been applied for the purposes intended in this project. The project has potential to address a significant arms control challenge, which is verification of the Biological Weapons Convention (1972). Feedback already received from other researchers about its viability and usefulness has been very positive. Therefore, it has high potential to succeed and have a significant positive impact in the field of biorisk reduction.

Project Activities

The project aims to develop new uses of open source data for biological arms control, focusing initially on verifying the information provided by state members of the Biological Weapons Convention (1972). Its activities consist of research to apply open source data to new uses. The primary techniques used will include analysis of commercial satellite imagery and other geospatial analysis, media and network analysis relating to scientific activity, including collecting data from social media, analyzing publication and download records of significance for biological weapons programs. The data gathered will be used to develop a detection model that can model possible non-compliance with the terms of the Biological Weapons Convention. 

How much funding are they requesting?

$30,000-$180,000

What would they do with the amount specified?

$30,000 would cover six months’ salary for myself to work full-time on the project ($24,000) and other costs involved in the research, such as organizational subscriptions to software and other services (including license and service fees for Maxar and other necessary programs), development of a website and any services that had to be commissioned from a freelancer. At the other end of the suggested scale, $180,000 would cover one year's salary for myself and two others (one additional researcher and one developer), as well as hiring and set-up costs mentioned above.

Here you can review the entire public portion of the application (which contains a lot more information about the applicant and their project):

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lhz3h8SjdyHn2xR9qZwaF4gfU0RxsGRONyf024Q9DIM/edit