Roundtable Breakout Discussions with Continental Breakfast

TUESDAY, JUNE 18 | 8:00-8:55 am 

Participants choose a specific breakout discussion group to join. Each group has a moderator to ensure focused discussions around key issues within the topic. This format allows participants to meet potential collaborators, share examples from their work, vet ideas with peers and be part of a group problem-solving endeavor. The discussions provide an informal exchange of ideas and are not meant to be a corporate or specific product discussion.

TABLE 1 - Biodetection In the Real World
Moderator: Chris Taitt, PhD, Research Biochemist, Center for Bio Molecular Science & Engineering, U.S. Naval Research Lab

• Testing in advance of deployment - what is the best strategy?
• Are abbreviated instructions sufficient to inform technicians and how do we account for mis-handling, untrained users?
• How can we decrease costs associated with development, manufacturing, and testing so that tests are affordable by developing nations?
• How can we account for underlying health issues encountered in developing nations?

TABLE 2 - The Future of Continuous Environmental Monitoring Biodetection- The Next “Biowatch”
Moderator: Luther Lindler, PhD, Chief Scientist & Advisor, Chemical & Biological Defense, U.S. Department of Homeland Security

• What are the key challenges for biodetection both indoors and outdoors.
• Improvements in sensitivity and specificity (new biosensors).
• Indoor challenges/outdoor challenges.
• The need for improved data analytics to identify biological releases.
• What might a future detection system look like?

TABLE 3 - How to Deal with Using Microbial Genomics To Identify Potential Bioterrorism Attacks. 
Moderator: David Ussery, PhD, Helen Adams & The Arkansas Research Alliance Chair in Biomedical Informatics, Director, Arkansas Center for Genomic Epidemiology & Medicine, Department of Biomedical Informatics, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences

• How do we address the issue with taxonomy, which has been rapidly changing.
• How do we classify potential pathogens “in the wild’, vs. ’terrorist GMOs’ vs. ‘environmental harmless bacteria’ is not as easy as it sounds.

Table 4: Detecting Infectious Disease Threats (IDTs) Where it is Needed
Moderator: Willy Valdivia-Granda, Founder & CEO, Orion Integrated Biosciences, Inc.

• Periodically previously unknown infectious diseases emerge to affect human, animals and plants; similarly, pathogens present in a population at low levels have re-emerged rapidly in incidence and geographic range with equally grave consequences.
• Given the dynamics of environmental change, travel and the ability of different governments to detect IDTs is key to develop integrative policies to accurately detect infectious diseases.
• The challenges that more 1500 IDTs pose to human, animal or plant health and how different technologies can be applied in diverse operational environments.
• What are the practical requirements, regulatory issues and policy challenges.

TABLE 5 - Understanding The Hurdles to Introducing POC Technologies to Established Medical Facilities
Moderator: Joany Jackman, PhD, Senior Scientist, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory

• With whom do you need to be talking to get your device into a medical facility?
• What impact do you expect your device to have in its operating environment?
• How do you compare to the established technologies?
• Who pays for your test and what are they willing to pay?
• This early morning session is intended to be a discussion of the questions you should be thinking about as your technology moves toward commercialization.

• What are the syndromic and situational information that influence diagnostics and detection
• What is the cost of this bias - in terms of decisions on the choice of sample, method, assay, and time to result
• Strategies to remove the bias from the diagnostics equation
• Role of big data and analytics in this response

• What happened?
• What was learned?
• Would you try it again?
• Did it lead to something else that was great?
• Was there collateral damage or benefits?
• How much did it cost?