The next session of the Defense Horizons luncheon seminar series will focus on "Biology and the Battlefield". Sounds like a familiar topic, but we have a different twist. We'll be talking about the growth of biomedical techniques to enhance troops' performance on the battlefield, not to kill or disable them.

The use of biology as an offensive weapon is already very familiar to us. As early as the 14th century the Mongols catapulted bodies of plague victims over the city walls of Kaffa in the Crimea spreading the plague to the Genoese defenders. The infection took and when the Genoese fled back to Italy they brought the plague with them. The spread of anthrax through the mail in the fall of 2001 is a more sophisticated modern day version of biological warfare. But at this session, we will look at the other side of the coin: the use of biomedical advances to give the troops capabilities and immunities they would otherwise lack. Promising areas of research include small electronic devices based on bacterial proteins to foods that contain vaccines. The possibilities range from warriors functioning in extreme environments to unmanned aerial vehicles flying in autonomous, intelligent swarms.

We have two superbly qualified speakers to frame this important issue for us, Dr. Michael Ladisch of Purdue University and Dr. Stephen Prior, founder of DynPort, LLC, a biomedical systems company.