Developing Standards for the Synthetic Biology Community

During the inaugural LEAP program, Fellows Sarah Munro, Patrick Boyle, Michal Galdzicki and Jeff Ubersax developed a vision for standards development as an effective way of ensuring the responsible development of the industry. NIST has since convened the Synthetic Biology Standard Consortium (SBSC), a multi-stakeholder consortium for development of standards for synthetic biology. Sarah Munro has taken on the role of leader of the California NIST team supporting the SBSC effort as part of the new Joint Initiative for Metrology in Biology (JIMB) at Stanford. JIMB unites people, platforms and projects to underpin standards-based research and innovation in biometrology. Many LEAP Fellows and mentors have been active participants in the SBSC’s working groups.