Please join us in welcoming Drs. Matthew Kasper and Lindsay Morton from the Department of Defense (DoD) Global Emerging Infections Surveillance (GEIS) program for their talk titled "Challenges and Opportunities in Pathogen Agnostic Sequencing for Public Health Surveillance: Lessons Learned From the Global Emerging Infections Surveillance Program." This webinar will take place Tuesday, October 29th, at noon PT.

In this talk, we will highlight opportunities and challenges for the implementation of pathogen agnostic sequencing in the context of the wider global community, and lessons learned from the GEIS program.

Pathogen agnostic sequencing is crucial for biodefense and public health, aiding in infectious disease detection and monitoring. The GEIS program leveraged early DoD biodefense and medical research investments in pathogen sequencing to enhance infectious disease surveillance activities performed by GEIS partner laboratories around the world.  

Next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies, which offer higher-throughput genome sequencing, have become more affordable and widely adopted in biomedical and public health labs. The reduced cost per genome or sample has made NGS a key part of routine public health surveillance.  

While pathogen agnostic sequencing technologies and testing approaches have matured and become more accessible, fewer considerations have been made for the operationalization of agnostic sequencing within the context of an infectious disease surveillance system.

The Advancing Threat Agnostic Biodefense Webinar Series brings together like-minded science and policy members of the biodefense community to discuss relevant research activities as well as barriers and enablers of a threat agnostic approach. The webinar series is hosted by the Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Technologies Division.

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