Newsroom
News, releases, and updates from Operation Outbreak, including new features, upcoming simulations, research, and program announcements.
Press releases and announcements
Newest first. Each release opens in full on our press site.
Operation Outbreak deploys biosecurity exercise at GHS 2026, welcomes former FBI WMD expert Dr. Susan Cropp
An interactive tabletop exercise at the Global Health Security Conference challenged attendees to make decisions under uncertainty during the early stages of a fictional biosecurity incident. Dr. Cropp co-facilitated alongside Kian Sani and Curtis Hoffmann, following more than two decades with the FBI Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate.
Read the release →
3 June 2026 · Boston
Outbreak Creator receives new graphics, features, and pathogens
Three new pathogens — H5N1, meningitis, and hantavirus — plus a streamlined user journey, updated graphics, and expanded in-tool insight into simulation parameters. Released alongside a new enhanced Simulation Guidebook.
Read →
20 May 2026 · Roxbury, Massachusetts
Operation Outbreak pilots outreach program with BioBus at Dearborn STEM Academy
Six classes of 9th, 11th and 12th grade students rotated through two lessons aboard BioBus’s mobile laboratory — microscopy and mask dissection on one side, simulation data, and contact tracing with Dr. Todd Brown on the other.
Read →
14 May 2026 · Trieste, Italy
Third biosecurity training with UN BWC ISU and ICGEB in Trieste
Sixteen early- and mid-career scientists from four continents completed a five-day course on pathogen detection and biosecurity, closing with a scenario-based tabletop exercise set in a fictional middle-income nation. The third such collaboration in under six months.
Read →
1 April 2026 · Washington, D.C.
Operation Outbreak powers biosecurity simulation and research study at Georgetown University
Nearly 100 students, academics, and professionals role-played public and institutional responders through a simulated measles outbreak across the DC metro area — the centrepiece of an IRB-approved observational study into whether high-fidelity simulation can proxy real-world outbreak science.
Read →
4 March 2026 · Trieste, Italy
Operation Outbreak facilitates biosecurity training with ICGEB in Trieste
Eighteen early- and mid-career scientists from Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan completed a five-day course on pathogen detection, genomic surveillance, and the governance of dual-use research — closing with a tabletop exercise in a fictional middle-income nation.
Read →
30 December 2025 · Geneva, Switzerland
Operation Outbreak expands biosecurity engagement at global events
A tabletop exercise for 15 early-career scientists from the Global South in Cape Town, then a panel at the Seventh Session of the UN Working Group on the Biological Weapons Convention — running a live measles simulation through more than 75 diplomats and organizational representatives at the Palace of Nations.
Read →
Get it in your inbox
One email when there is genuinely something to share: a new feature, an open simulation, or a finding worth passing on. No fixed cadence.
New features
Updates to the participant app and the facilitator tools, Creator, Lookout, and Visualizer, as they are released.
Upcoming simulations
Open simulations you can join or observe, plus facilitator training dates and competition deadlines.
Program news
New textbook chapters, lesson releases, published research, and updates from recent deployments.
Looking for press coverage?
Coverage, awards, the press kit, and media contacts are all on the Press page.