42 U.S.C. § 19132 — National Engineering Biology Research and Development Initiative

(a) In general — Acting through the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the President must implement a National Engineering Biology Research and Development Initiative^*. It advances societal well-being, national security, sustainability, and economic productivity and competitiveness by:

(1) advancing research where biological, physical, chemical, data, computational, and information sciences and engineering meet, to speed scientific understanding and technological innovation in engineering biology;
(2) advancing biomanufacturing research to optimize, standardize, scale, and deliver new products and solutions;
(3) supporting social and behavioral science and economics research that advances engineering biology and public understanding of new products, processes, and technologies;
(4) improving scientific and public understanding of engineering biology and supporting more evidence-based public discussion of its benefits and risks;
(5) supporting research about the risks and benefits of engineering biology, including research under subsection (d);
(6) supporting development of new tools and technologies that speed scientific understanding and technological innovation in engineering biology;
(7) expanding the number of researchers, educators, and students and developing a retooled workforce with engineering-biology training, including people from traditionally underrepresented and underserved populations;
(8) speeding private-sector translation and commercialization of engineering-biology and biomanufacturing research and development; and
(9) improving federal interagency planning and coordination related to engineering biology.

(b) Initiative activities — The Initiative must include:

(1) Sustained support for engineering-biology research and development through:

(A) grants for individual investigators and teams, including interdisciplinary teams;
(B) projects funded through joint solicitations by at least two participating agencies; and
(C) interdisciplinary research centers that investigate basic research questions, develop and demonstrate technology, and increase understanding of scaling engineering-biology processes, including biomanufacturing.

(2) Sustained support for databases and related tools, including:

(A) support for establishing, curating, and maintaining curated genomics, epigenomics, and other relevant omics databases, including plant, animal, and microbial databases. Researchers must be able to use these databases for engineering-biology research in a way that does not compromise national security or the privacy or security of information in the databases;
(B) development of database standards, including standards for curation, interoperability, and privacy and security protection;
(C) support for computational tools, including artificial-intelligence tools, that can speed research and innovation using the databases; and
(D) an inventory and assessment of all federal-government omics databases to identify opportunities to improve the utility of those databases, as appropriate and in a way that does not compromise national security or the privacy or security of information in them, and to inform investment in those databases as critical infrastructure for the engineering-biology research enterprise.

(3) Sustained support for developing, optimizing, and validating new tools and technologies for dynamic study of molecular processes in place, including:

(A) research at federal laboratories;
(B) grants for investigators at higher-education institutions and other nonprofit research institutions;
(C) incentives for developing retooled industrial sites across the country that support a shift to modernized engineering-biology initiatives; and
(D) awards under the Small Business Innovation Research Program and the Small Business Technology Transfer Program, as described in section 638 of title 15.

(4) Support for undergraduate and graduate education and training in engineering biology, biomanufacturing, bioprocess engineering, computational science applied to engineering biology, and related ethical, legal, environmental, safety, security, and other societal areas.

(5) Support for a national network of testbeds based on open standards, interfaces, and processes, including by reusing existing facilities such as those described in paragraph (3)(C), to enable laboratory engineering-biology research to be scaled up.

(6) Activities to develop strong ways to document and measure engineering biology's outputs and economic benefits.

(7) Activities to speed translation and commercialization of new products, processes, and technologies by:

(A) identifying precompetitive research opportunities;
(B) facilitating public-private engineering-biology research and development partnerships, including to address barriers to scaling innovations;
(C) connecting researchers, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows with entrepreneurship education and training; and
(D) supporting proof-of-concept activities and formation of startup companies, including through the Small Business Innovation Research Program and the Small Business Technology Transfer Program.

(c) Expanding participation — To the maximum extent practicable, the Initiative must include outreach about Initiative opportunities to primarily undergraduate institutions, historically Black colleges and universities, Tribal Colleges or Universities, and minority-serving institutions. It must also encourage research collaborations between research-intensive universities and those institutions.

(d) Ethical, legal, environmental, safety, security, and societal issues — Initiative activities must address these issues by:

(1) supporting research, including social-science research, and other activities about ethical, legal, environmental, and other appropriate societal issues related to engineering biology; integrating that research with engineering-biology research and development; and encouraging dissemination of its results, including through the interdisciplinary centers described in subsection (b)(1)(C);
(2) supporting research and other activities about engineering biology's safety and security implications, including outreach, when appropriate, to increase awareness among federal researchers and federally funded higher-education researchers;
(3) ensuring that federal and non-federal expert input on these issues is integrated into the Initiative;
(4) ensuring, through participating agencies and departments, that public input and outreach are integrated through regular and ongoing public discussions, such as workshops, consensus conferences, and educational events, when appropriate; and
(5) complying with all applicable federal law.