Hardening pharmaceutical response to pandemics: concrete project seeks project lead

TL;DR

We are looking for a collaborator to explore projects aiming to harden pharmaceutical infrastructure.

We would figure out up to 3 months of full-time equivalent funding, at up to 100% of ‘EA-salary,’ with the duration of the project ranging from 3 to 12 months based on the lead’s preferences. The successful candidate would be responsible for (1) refining/​adapting our MVP proposal, (2) finding an external partner, and (3) securing additional funding.

Express your interest here!

Pharmaceutical response needs hardening

Certain pandemic scenarios may lead to severe compromises to pharmaceutical response. Such compromises would increase the likelihood of far worse pandemic outcomes.

Governments already expend significant resources to protect command and control, military response, and other capabilities against more traditional threats. By comparison, the pharmaceutical response capability is relatively unprotected.

Meanwhile, we believe that there are high-impact, relatively low-cost measures that can be taken to better harden existing facilities against these threats.

We have the beginnings of a plan

See here.

We have also interacted with a couple of (technologically and politically) relevant stakeholders, who have expressed interest in seeing this project move forward.

We need someone to run with this + partner organization

Our first blocker is a person to drive this project forward. While we can act as involved advisors, we won’t have the capacity to work on this full-time over the next 2-3 years.

The ideal candidate would have the following attributes, in descending order of importance. (Please don’t be discouraged from submitting the interest form if you don’t fit all of the criteria!)

  1. Share core vision/​be enthusiastic about taking responsibility for success of project,

  2. Experience successfully leading projects, Excellent communicator, planner, team-builder,

  3. Skilled at building relationships with and managing external stakeholders,

  4. Expertise in biosecurity or related fields, and/​or

  5. Existing connections with relevant stakeholders.

We are open to commitments from 1 day per week to full-time.

Our second blocker is a partner organization with whom we can develop, iterate, and implement our ideas in the real world.

That person could be you

So let us know if you’re interested here!

We also welcome suggestions about the substance of the idea, or about getting more buy-in from important stakeholders.