Report to NSF on Banbury Workshop on Designer Molecules for Biosensor Applications

This report summarizes the discussions and recommendations from a three-day workshop, organized at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories' Banbury Center aimed at exploring the feasibility of the state-of-the-art and potential near-, medium-and longer-term technologies that can be used to quickly detect pathogenic microorganisms and toxins. The stated goals were to germinate potential multidisciplinary collaborations, accelerate maturation of existing technology, encourage industrial participation, and structure policy issues for multiple funding agencies to participate cooperatively. Towards this end, we first identified appropriate scientific and non-scientific participants, who could judge the pros and cons of various technologies, gauge the risks of successful execution of new research plans and identify a structure for integrating existing and potential technologies. With considerable help from Dr. Jan Witkowski and his office at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, we organized the workshop at the Banbury Center of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory during a three-day period 12-14 of August 2002.