Charity

SecureBio

SecureBio is a nonprofit working alongside the MIT Sculpting Evolution Group on highly targeted projects seeking to prevent or respond to the next pandemic.

Cause area: Creating a better future

What problem is SecureBio working on?

SecureBio is working to address the risks from pandemics. See our research on improving biosecurity and pandemic preparedness to learn about why we think this is a high-impact cause.

What does SecureBio do?

As an example of its work, SecureBio has been conducting projects to develop and deploy better personal protective equipment (PPE) before the next pandemic, including:

Evaluating the feasibility of new forms of PPE: Should governments invest in portable air filtration, light-based sanitisation, or dry heat devices?
Mapping out how testing and certification of PPE works in various countries, to support the rollout of these technologies.
Laying the groundwork for estimates of how much PPE would need to be stockpiled in order to keep society from collapsing in a particularly severe pandemic before new large-scale production could be achieved.

The Atlantic covered SecureBio’s motivations for exploring options for much better PPE.

Other examples of SecureBio’s work include:

Nucleic Acid Observatory — A project aiming to pioneer widespread, untargeted metagenomic sequencing of our environment to provide reliable early warning of all biological threats — including those we have never seen before.
Secure DNA — A project which has developed a highly specific and fully automated screening mechanism to scan DNA orders for potential threats.

What evidence is there of SecureBio’s effectiveness?

SecureBio meets our criteria to be listed on our donation platform based on the recommendation of one of our trusted evaluators, Longview Philanthropy. (Our trusted evaluators are charitable giving experts who focus on impact — their research into the best charities means your donations can do even more good. Learn more about charity evaluators we trust and why.)

At Giving What We Can, we focus on the effectiveness of an organisation’s work, which considers much more than just the administration costs of the organisation. Learn more about this common “overhead myth” and our approach to charity evaluation.

Why donate through the Giving What We Can donation platform?

Your donations through our portal are tax deductible in the UK, US, and the Netherlands. Giving What We Can does not take any fees from donors using our platform or from charities listed on our platform. We are independently funded to promote our mission of making giving effectively and significantly a cultural norm. Read more on our transparency page.

Your current selection

Funds / Organisations you select will show up here

Allocate Donation