Strategies for Responding to Exponential AI and Biotechnology Growth
March 4-5, 2026 [NEW DATE]
Hopkins Bloomberg Center
555 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington DC
Registration is now open (Virtual option available for talks only)
Background: The ever-increasing acceleration of agentic artificial intelligence (AI) and biological design tools has transformed the technological landscape, enabling tremendous benefits and potential misuse that could massively impact national security and public health. Mitigating this risk will require collaboration across Government, Industry, and Academia with both technical and policy focuses. Significant effort has already been made to raise awareness of this challenge but additional discussion is necessary to maintain pace with the speed of evolving technology. The second workshop in this series will build upon insights from our first workshop and take place over two days.
Objective: Johns Hopkins and RTX BBN Technologies, with funding from a Johns Hopkins Nexus Award, are excited to host a workshop series to shape safeguards that can enable the community to understand potential risk and inform response on relevant timelines.
Agenda
| Time | Description |
|---|---|
| Day 1 Theme : Evaluation | |
| 1000-1010 | TBD: Opening Remarks “Scene Setter” |
| 1010-1040 | Review of Nexus Workshop 1 |
| 1040-1050 | BREAK |
| 1050-1115 | Coleman Breen (SecureBio) Beyond Expert-level Q&A: Biosecurity Evals for Increasingly Capable AI |
| 1115-1140 | Sophie Payne / Charles Fracchia (BlackMesa) Establishing Good AI Practice (GAIP) for Drug Safety: Addressing Regulatory Challenges and Data Integrity Risks in ADME-Tox Modeling |
| 1140-1205 | Joshua Gil / Gene Godbold (Signature Science) Differentiating “Gain of Function” and “Dangerous Gain of Function” |
| 1205-1305 | LUNCH BREAK |
| 1305-1330 | Rocco Casagrande (Deloitte) LLM evaluations, gaps and implications for policy |
| 1330-1355 | Olivia Shoemaker (Frontier Design) Unanswered Questions in Threat Modeling for AIxBio evaluations and safeguards |
| 1355-1410 | Overview and Setup of Breakouts |
| 1410-1530 | Breakout work |
| 1530-1540 | BREAK |
| 1540-1630 | Breakout summaries and synthesis |
| 1630-FINX | No Host Social |
| Day 2 Theme : Mitigation | |
| 0900-0910 | TBD: Opening Remarks “Scene Setter” Day 2 |
| 0910-0935 | Sunishchal Dev, Jeffrey Lee (RAND) Bridging the Digital to Physical Divide |
| 0935-0945 | Review of Evaluation take aways from Day 1 |
| 0945-1010 | David Ross (NIST) A Strategy for Data Collection to Solve the Protein Function Problem |
| 1010-1020 | BREAK |
| 1020-1045 | Justin Taylor (Anthropic) |
| 1045-1110 | Melissa Hopkins (Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security) |
| 1110-1135 | Chris Meserole (Frontier Model Forum) |
| 1135-1235 | LUNCH |
| 1235-1245 | Overview and Setup of Breakouts |
| 1245-1345 | Breakout work |
| 1345-1400 | BREAK |
| 1400-1450 | Breakout summaries and synthesis |
| 1450-1500 | Wrap up and next steps |
Abstract Submissions
We welcome abstracts for consideration to present during the Nexus series. Abstracts may be selected to present during the March workshop or a future workshop. Please submit abstracts here: Google Form
Deadline: January 30, 2026, AoE
Decisions: February 5, 2026
Slides due: TBD, AoE
Organizers
Joel Bader (JHU), Melissa Hopkins (JHU), Debra Mathews (JHU), Aaron Adler (BBN), Kemper Talley (BBN), Nic Roehner (BBN), Kenny Yeh (Safe Traces)