69th Annual Biosafety and Biosecurity Hybrid Conference
Tuesday Scientific Program
All times listed will be Eastern Standard Time
Tuesday, October 13, 2026
Session 8 | Eagleson Lecture Award
8:00 – 8:45 am Title: TBD
Luis Ostrosky-Zeichner, MD, McGovern Medical School (UTHealth Houston), Houston, TX
8:45 – 9:00 am Q&A Session
9:00 – 9:15 am | Break
Session 9 | Biosafety Grab-bag
9:15 – 9:30 am Infection Prevention and Control and Biosafety. Two Roads. Same Destination.
Tom Walus, Canadian Association for Biological Safety, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Biosafety and infection prevention and control share the common goal of protecting public health.
9:30 – 9:45 am Guidelines Needed for the Role of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics in Biohazardous Research
Daniel Eisenman, PhD, RBP(ABSA), CBSP(ABSA), SM(NRCM), Advarra, Research Triangle Park, NC
Discuss how AI and robotics will impact biomedical research and how biosafety programs and IBCs should prepare.
9:45 – 10:00 am A Multidisciplinary Framework for Clinical Biosafety at Boston Children’s Hospital Madeeha Maqsood, MS, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA
Expanding advanced therapies require harmonized biosafety frameworks across clinical settings to protect staff, patients, and the community while ensuring safe, consistent handling of investigational biologics; this approach enables rapid, standardized guidance implementation.
10:00 – 10:15 am Q&A Session
10:15 – 10:45 am | Exhibits, Posters, and Coffee Break
Session 10 | Invited Speaker
10:45 – 11:30 am Title: TBD
Jerome Goddard, PhD, Mississippi State University, Starkville, MS
11:30 – 11:45 am Q&A Session
11:45 – 1:15 pm | Exhibits, Posters, and Lunch
Session 11 | Poster Session
12:15 – 1:15 pm Presenters must be available during the session.
Session 12 | Animal, Vegetable, Min…er Biosafety
1:15 – 1:30 pm Static to Dynamic: A Novel Approach to Vivarium Biosafety Signage
Meagan P. Fitzpatrick, MPH, Princeton, Princeton, NJ
Illuminate creative and low-resource ways to use existing institutional IT platforms to resolve biosafety hazard communication challenges in vivarium facilities.
1:30 – 1:45 pm Who Let the Dogs in? Service Animals in Academic Research Environments
Zoey Yi, MS, University of Missouri—Kansas City, Kansas City, MO
Highlight how clearer, standardized service animal policies can reduce biosafety risk while supporting accessibility and regulatory compliance in academic laboratories.
1:45 – 2:00 pm Honey Bees (Apis Mellifera) as a Continuous Surveillance and Detection System for Fungal Pathogens in the Environment
Victoria Everhart, University of Central Oklahoma, Edmond, OK
Sequencing of microorganisms found in honeybee hive debris reveals informative variations in microbial community structure across different environments, demonstrating the use of honey bees as a useful pathogen monitoring system relevant to biosecurity and agricultural health.
2:00 – 2:15 pm Protecting Innovation: Biosafety in Crop Science
Bria Kettle, PhD, RBP(ABSA), Bayer, Chesterfield, MO
By challenging the misconception that plant and crop research poses minimal or no biosafety risk, we can strengthen safe agricultural innovation, support responsible use of biological crop protection tools, and help close corresponding emerging regulatory gaps.
2:15 – 2:45 pm Q&A Session
2:45 – 3:45 pm | Coffee Break, Posters, Exhibits, and Raffle
Exhibitor raffle prizes will be awarded – must be present to win
Session 13 | Applied Biosafety
3:45 – 4:00 pm BSC Mythbusters: Can All Holes in a HEPA Filter be Detected?
Kara Brunelle, PhD, Baker, Sanford, ME
The standard HEPA leak-check protocol will detect most holes in the filter medium, but there is a minimum that will not be discovered in the BSC.
4:00 – 4:15 pm No Germs Left Behind: Biological Verification Testing of a Chemical Effluent Decontamination System
Sabena Blakeney, PhD, RBP(ABSA), CBSP(ABSA), Pond & Company, Peachtree Corners, GA
Demonstrates that a simple, bench-top biological verification method can provide a practical and accessible validation framework for chemical effluent decontamination systems in high-containment laboratories.
4:15 – 4:30 pm Evaluation of Hybrid Hydrogen Peroxide Vapor for DNA Amplicon Inactivation in Sensitive Molecular Systems
Elizabeth Massoth, CURIS System, Manhattan, KS
Hybrid hydrogen peroxide vapor provides a practical method to control DNA amplicon contamination in sensitive PCR-based environments while enabling reuse of previously contaminated equipment and improving material compatibility compared to more aggressive chemistries.
4:30 – 4:45 pm When Steam Doesn’t Work: How to Choose Alternative Decontamination Methods?
Karen Gjendal, DVM, PhD, Bavarian Nordic A/S, Kvistgaard, Denmark
Challenging traditional ways of decontaminating production vessels used for manufacturing with highly pathogenic agents.
4:45 – 5:15 pm Q&A Session
6:00 – 10:00 pm | Banquet