About
An independent nonprofit for adaptive biosecurity
Fourth Eon is an independent nonprofit institute mission-locked on researching, developing, and deploying new technologies to detect and block engineered biological threats.
Our mission
Deter, prevent, detect, and mitigate
Our mission is to advance public health, public safety, and global biosecurity by developing the capabilities to deter, prevent, detect, and mitigate biological risks arising from artificial intelligence and biotechnology.
As a mission-locked nonprofit, we research, build, deploy, and continually improve biosecurity infrastructure. Our first program, SCREEN, is developing function-based screening for nucleic acid and protein synthesis. SHIELD has completed scoping, and three more programs are open for scoping proposals.
How we work
- Scientific research. Evaluating what AI models can predict and design, and what that means for detecting hazardous biological function.
- Development and deployment. Building screening tools that work in practice for synthesis providers and laboratories.
- Standards contributions. Contributing evidence and methods to synthesis-screening practice, including our 2026 perspective on function-based screening.
- Field building. Mentoring researchers through ERA, MATS, SPAR, and our own fellowship.
Oversight and responsible research
Our research and its dissemination follow Fourth Eon’s Safe and Responsible Research Framework, including pre-publication review. We publish what can be published safely.
Work is overseen by our Biosecurity and Scientific Advisory Committees and our Board.
Support
Our function-based screening research is supported by a grant from Sentinel Bio.
To support or partner with Fourth Eon, get in touch.
Our name
Biosecurity in the Fourth Eon
We live in the Fourth Eon: a period when animals and plants have flourished and human intelligence has emerged.
Fourth Eon takes its name from this tumultuous period, a period where AI is now vastly accelerating the ability to model, design, and modify biology itself.
Our work focuses on mitigating the increasing risks via adaptive biosecurity tools and infrastructure that arise as biology becomes unavoidably engineerable.