How a Pandemic Shaped the Framework for Blueprint Biosecurity

In January 2020, the world changed forever. News of an emerging pathogen spread rapidly across borders, with no clear answers about what would come next. By March, cities were shutting down, non-essential services were closing, and daily life around the world was coming to a halt. This was the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As the pandemic unfolded, it revealed how unprepared many systems were for a fast-moving airborne biological threat. Public health agencies were stretched thin, supply chains broke down, and diagnostics and testing were slow to scale. Yet the pandemic also demonstrated the extraordinary capabilities of modern science and industry when operating with urgency and focus. Operation Warp Speed helped establish a new paradigm by leveraging public-private partnerships to accelerate the development, manufacturing, and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics. It showed that with sustained investment and clear public-private coordination, medical countermeasures can move from concept to deployment far faster than previously thought.

That success also made the remaining gaps clearer. Many of the tools needed to reduce future biological threats were within reach, but they still needed a clearer path from promise to preparedness. Blueprint Biosecurity was formally incorporated as a 501(c)(3) organization three years ago to help build that path by identifying promising technologies, supporting their development, and preparing them for real-world use before an emergency. 

Early Beginnings

Jake Swett’s early interest in astronomy and outer space reflected a broader fascination with ambitious technologies and the kinds of breakthroughs that could shape society’s future. Throughout graduate school and the early stages of his career, he thought deeply about how he could use the knowledge he was gaining to make the greatest possible impact. Over time, that interest turned toward a more immediate question: what could be done to make society safer, stronger, and more resilient against future threats? 

As he explored that question, Jake began connecting with members of the broader biosecurity community to better understand the field’s most pressing challenges and the gaps preventing promising ideas from moving forward. Those conversations helped crystallize his interest in the role that ambitious technological development could play in reducing biological risk.

The emergence of COVID-19 brought greater urgency and attention to that work, exposing longstanding weaknesses in pandemic preparedness. Against the backdrop of a global crisis, Jake became increasingly focused on the practical work of making society better prepared for biological threats.

That focus eventually led him to lead the development of the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense’s Apollo Program for Biodefense report. Released in January 2021, the report drew on extensive research, expert interviews, and roundtable discussions to lay out a portfolio of technologies and capabilities that could put an end to pandemics before the decade is out. Its recommendations would later help inform the Biden administration’s American Pandemic Preparedness Plan.

For Jake, the Apollo Program helped solidify a central premise: resilience against biological threats is possible, but it will not happen on its own. Over the next few years, that premise became the foundation for Blueprint Biosecurity. 

Building a New Organization from Scratch

(Above: Photo from a 2024 team offsite)

Blueprint began as a conversation about what type of organization could most effectively advance biosecurity and pandemic preparedness. Early discussions with experts, prospective partners, and potential team members explored different organizational models and priority areas, including whether Blueprint should operate within an established organization or become an independent entity. Although its values had not yet been formally articulated, the approach already reflected them: weighing tradeoffs, exploring alternatives, and choosing the path believed to offer the greatest potential for impact. This iterative work helped shape the organization.

By July 2023, Blueprint had formally incorporated as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with a team of five. Its purpose was to identify the interventions most likely to reduce pandemic risk, understand what was blocking their adoption, and help move them forward.

From the beginning, Blueprint was designed with execution in mind. As the organization began its work, a set of practical questions rose to the top: which ideas were most promising, what stood in their way, who needed to be involved, and what it would take to make them usable at scale.

Over time, Blueprint’s work converged around three core functions. The first is the development of “Blueprints,” which are deep, structured analyses grounded in extensive research and expert consultation. These reports assess the scientific, technical, and implementation challenges associated with promising interventions and provide a roadmap for advancing them.

The second is the establishment of coordinated research programs run by internal program leads and shaped by the priorities identified in the Blueprints. Each program focuses on removing barriers to the implementation of promising technologies. Sometimes that means supporting technical research to advance knowledge in the field. Other times, it means funding early-stage exploration, listening sessions, or other practical work needed to move an idea closer to implementation.

The third is advocacy to build support for promising solutions and create the conditions for their adoption. Blueprint works to elevate overlooked interventions and strengthen the case for action. It also engages with researchers, government agencies, public health officials, philanthropy, industry, and communities around shared priorities. The goal is to help move preparedness solutions into policy and practice before the next emergency forces action under pressure.

Together, these functions give Blueprint a practical model for turning preparedness priorities into action.

From Pandemic Lessons to Operational Priorities

Blueprint was founded at a time when public attention to pandemic preparedness was already fading. After major outbreaks, there is often a burst of urgency, followed by a return to business as usual. Funding slows. Coordination weakens. Lessons from the previous emergency are acknowledged but not always turned into lasting change, and in some cases, the wrong lessons are carried through to future emergencies. 

A central premise of Blueprint’s work is that preparedness cannot be improvised after an emergency begins. The systems needed to respond effectively must be built before they are needed, from manufacturing capacity and supply chains to regulatory pathways and public-private partnerships. Blueprint’s early work therefore focused on interventions that could meaningfully reduce pandemic risk while remaining feasible within real-world constraints.

Today, two major areas anchor Blueprint’s work. Both reflect Blueprint’s focus on interventions that can be prepared in advance, work across a range of pathogens, and help mitigate biological threats before pathogen-specific tools are available. The first is personal protective equipment (PPE), and the second is air treatment interventions for the built environment.

The PPE portfolio focuses on ensuring there are robust reusable respirator stockpiles, understanding and overcoming barriers that prevent critical workers from successfully using reusable respirators during an emergency, and assessing strategies for respirator surge manufacturing. The pandemic demonstrated both the importance of effective respiratory protection and the limitations of existing systems, especially when critical workers needed access to reliable protection quickly and supply chains came under strain.

The built environment portfolio focuses on reducing the spread of pathogens in the places where people live, work, learn, and receive care. The pandemic showed how much indoor spaces can shape the spread of respiratory disease. Better tools for cleaning indoor air in schools, hospitals, workplaces, and public spaces could reduce the spread of future outbreaks and improve everyday public health. To date, Blueprint’s work in this area has included programs focused on far-UVC, a form of germicidal ultraviolet light, and glycol vapors, a class of compounds with potential applications for reducing airborne pathogens in indoor environments.

Taken together, these priorities reflect Blueprint’s broader approach to pandemic preparedness. Rather than focusing only on what might work in theory, the organization works to make high-impact interventions practical, scalable, and ready before they are urgently needed.

Growth and Institutional Development

Since its founding, Blueprint Biosecurity has grown into an organization of around twenty people with backgrounds spanning biological sciences, public health, policy, engineering, operations, and advocacy. The organization has been awarded over $95 million to date, with the majority of the funds directed toward priority research initiatives, including PPE, far-UVC, glycol vapors, and additional built environment pathogen mitigation technologies.

That growth has expanded the range of partners involved in Blueprint’s work. Today, Blueprint works with scientists, academic institutions, government agencies, philanthropic entities, industry, and public health organizations on six continents to advance its priorities across PPE and air treatment interventions for the built environment. These partnerships help translate technical opportunities into projects, funding strategies, and implementation pathways. 

This broader network also gives Blueprint greater flexibility in how it approaches promising ideas. The organization can fund targeted research, support early-stage exploration, convene experts, commission analysis, or help position a project for another organization to carry forward. This allows Blueprint to investigate opportunities without assuming that every promising idea must become a long-term program.

Some areas develop into sustained bodies of work. Others prove valuable but fall outside Blueprint’s core focus. In those cases, the organization works to preserve what it has learned, make that knowledge available, and connect the work with partners better positioned to carry it forward.

Even as the organization has grown, its role has remained the same. Blueprint is not a general-purpose research organization or a traditional think tank. Its work centers on interventions that could substantially reduce pandemic risk in the near term (within two to five years) and on the practical steps needed to move them toward real-world deployment.

A Long-Term Project

As the biological threat landscape continues to evolve, with advanced AI capabilities and potential threats from non-state actors creating new national security considerations, the need to prepare ahead of the next widespread outbreak has become increasingly urgent. 

Blueprint was founded on the belief that large-scale resilience against biological threats is achievable. Outbreaks will continue to occur, but whether they escalate into pandemics depends on the choices made beforehand. The technologies, systems, and institutional capabilities needed to detect threats early, reduce transmission, and respond effectively are increasingly within reach. The challenge is putting them into practice. 

Blueprint is now entering a critical period of growth and execution. In the coming years, the organization plans to expand into new programmatic areas, build additional partnerships, and help shape the funding and deployment of promising preparedness technologies. Realizing that potential will require people and institutions willing to contribute their expertise, resources, and support.

Together, these efforts advance the central premise that led to Blueprint’s founding: society can become better prepared for the next pandemic and build a more resilient future.