The Common Mechanism is developed and maintained by IBBIS, the International Biosecurity and Biosafety Initiative for Science. From 2021-2023, the software and databases were developed by a team of technical consultants working with the Nuclear Threat Initiative. In 2024, IBBIS was launched and became the home of the project.
Major milestones in the development of the Common Mechanism include:
- January 2020: the Common Mechanism was proposed by an international working group jointly convened by the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) and the World Economic Forum (WEF), which also called for an international entity that will house the mechanism, promote its adoption, and work to establish global norms for nucleic acid synthesis screening.
- 2020-2023: advised an international technical consortium, the Common Mechanism software and databases were developed by a team led by Dr. Nicole Wheeler of the University of Birmingham, and including contributions from Brittany Rife Magalis of the University of Louisville and Jennifer Lu of the Center for Computational Biology at Johns Hopkins University.
- February 2024: IBBIS is launched, acting as a long-term home for the Technical Consortium and Common Mechanism, among other initiatives to advance biosecurity.
- May 2024: public launch of the first open-source version of the Common Mechanism software.
The Common Mechanism continues to be developed by an IBBIS team.