Significance: After the Covid-19 Pandemic there has been a great concern amongst policymakers at all levels about the future of biosecurity. Biosecurity is best defined as the prevention of natural, accidental and deliberately caused disease in humans, animals and plants. Amongst these categories preventing deliberately caused disease is organised at the international level through the 1925 Geneva Protocol, the 1970s Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) and, because of the overlap in the coverage of toxins, the 1990s Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). During this century both Conventions have developed guidelines for codes of conduct for life and associated scientists to better engage them in the prevention of the misuse of their benignly intended work. The Hague Ethical Guidelines were developed under the CWC and the Tianjin Guidelines under the BTWC. However, it is well-understood that to effectively implement these guidelines in practice life and associated scientists will need to have a much better understanding of the problem of dual use and of biosecurity more generally. What are these weapons, why are they being used and how can the further development and use of such weapons best be prevented? Given the attention given to biological and chemical weapons attacks recently, this course is a useful way of introducing students to the societal implications of this body of scientific works and of how we are trying to deal with such implications, so that students are well prepared in this subject of area. This course can also provide training for students in understanding what the role of scientists can play in detection, prevention and treatment of “dual-use” of biological and chemical weapons, which links to their subjects’ studies in the university. Goal: The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons was justifiably awarded the Nobel Prize in 2013 for the work it had done on ridding the world of most of the huge stocks of chemical weapons that States had built up during the last century. Its task now is to prevent the re-emergence of biological and chemical weapons in an increasingly dangerous international system and during a period of very rapid scientific and technological change in biology, chemistry, nanotechnology and related sciences. The course will be able to attract interests in these very important areas which is multidisciplinary researches involved, and enable students to think how scientists and societies can play their roles or enlighten them to the requirements involved in such an endeavour. Content: This course will be organized from introduction; the chemical and biological weapons prevention and disarmament regime today; advances in biology, chemistry, nanotechnology, and others (including Gene editing, AI etc); implications for arms control and disarmament; to the role of civil society; and conclusion. Assessment: This multidisciplinary course will cover different subject areas and therefore the assessment of the course will be a short thesis to link students own subject areas with biological, chemical and cyber security. Reading lists: 1)Preventing Chemical Weapons: Arms Control and Disarmament as the Sciences Converge, The Royal Society of Chemistry Press, 2018; 2)Act now to close chemical-weapons loophole. Nature 562, 344 (2018); 3) Preventing chemical weapons as sciences converge. Science, 362(6416):753-755 (2018); 4) Dual-use research needs international oversight. Nature, 609(7929):895 (2022); 5) Essentials of Biological Security: a global perspective, Wiley, 2024