Overview
The tremendous power of the bioeconomy can be felt across multiple sectors of the economy, including healthcare, agriculture, clean energy, materials, chemicals and beyond.
In the past several years we've seen notable examples, such as: RNA vaccines against COVID-19 deployed in record time; genetically modified crops with increased resilience to environmental extremes; demonstration-scale plants that convert industrial waste gasses into useful chemicals and materials; and new industries being spawned that leverage advances in AI and protein design.
To enable these and other applications across all sectors, the US needs to invest in tools, infrastructure, and policies that are foundational to all sectors of the bioeconomy, as well as a strong and diverse workforce.
Call to Action
The CASA-Bio initiative was created to help implement the Bioeconomy Executive Order issued by the White House in September 2022. The EO laid out a vision for government-wide collaboration to advance biotechnology and biomanufacturing through foundational and use-inspired research in five thematic areas: climate change, food and agriculture, supply chain resilience, human health, and the cross-cutting advances. The goal of CASA-Bio is to bring the EO to life.
The first step in the CASA-Bio Action Plan was a set of so-called Alignment Meetings held in December 2023 in which representatives from government funding agencies, industries, and non-profits met and collaborated to identify scientific subthemes of shared interest—within each of the Bioeconomy Executive Order Themes—that we believe have high potential to advance the bioeconomy through innovative R&D. Now, it is time for step two. We invite you, the research community, to view these subthemes and consider how your research ideas could contribute. Your input will serve to help us define synergistic priority research areas that will be subjects of future research community workshops and development of road maps for addressing key challenges to advance the bioeconomy.
For scientists and engineers, the opportunities to contribute to this vital field are abundant. Whether your expertise is in basic discovery, tool development, scale up and advanced manufacturing, cyber, physical, and human infrastructure, public engagement, risk assessment and communication, or biosecurity, your research can have a profound impact. There is a growing need for interdisciplinary approaches that combine different areas of expertise to create holistic and effective solutions.
Representative Subtheme Challenges
CCA-01: Workforce Development for the Bioeconomy
Meeting the growing needs of the bioeconomy across all sectors will require a diverse, skilled workforce spanning fundamental science to manufacturing.
CCA-02: Foundational Discovery Driving the Bioeconomy
Continued investments in foundational science and engineering research are needed to catalyze new breakthrough tools, technologies, and innovations to fuel the bioeconomy.
CCA-03: Biomanufacturing, Bioreactors, and Scale-up
"Traditional methods for engineering and manufacturing need to evolve to permit faster progression of foundational knowledge to bioproduct commercialization, e.g., lab to market."
CCA-04: Future of Advanced Bioeconomy Computing
New computational approaches are needed to integrate the vast multimodal biological datasets to enhance discovery, scalability, and sustainability of biotechnology science and engineering.
CCA-05: Data Sharing and Infrastructure
Unified and scalable data infrastructure is needed to leverage available data from multiple sources across different sectors to support application of new technologies for the bioeconomy.
CCA-06: Responsible Innovation
"Biotechnology-associated research and the resulting products need to be developed proactively to ensure best practices for security, safety, equity, accessibility, and sustainability."
CCA-07: Risk Communication
To ensure societal acceptance and adoption of the products of biotechnology, there is an urgent need for effective communication of risks associated with biotechnological advancements.
CCA-08: Biosecurity in the Bioeconomy
"To safeguard public health and the environment, research is needed to understand and preemptively address potential biosecurity risks in the bioeconomy."
CCA-09: Advancing Regulatory Science for Products of Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing
"Regulatory science research is needed to advance development of tools, standards, and approaches that support regulatory decision-making."