Building talent to mitigate risks at the interface of AIxBiosecurity
Deadline: November 5th
An 8-week, fully funded research fellowship at Cambridge, UK, for fellows to work on concrete projects mitigating biosecurity risks, including those amplified by frontier AI.
January 26 - March 20, 2026
Our mission: advance the scientific and policy breakthroughs required for tackling biosecurity risks, including those amplified by recent advances in AI.
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THE PROGRAMME
Fellows spend 8 weeks executing an independent research project, supported by both an expert mentor matched to their research area and dedicated research managers who provide day-to-day guidance. Beyond individual research, the programme also features skill-building workshops, talks from leading researchers and policymakers, and an AIxBio symposium at the end of the programme for you to disseminate your research.
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SUPPORT
Fellows receive a competitive stipend, lodging in Cambridge, meals during work hours, and full visa and travel support. Throughout the fellowship, our Community Health Manager provides wellbeing resources, community-building activities, and one-on-one community health support to ensure that each fellow thrives both personally and professionally, which is very important for us.
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OUR FELLOWS
We welcome talented researchers from around the world, with backgrounds in AI/ML, biology, policy or related fields, who are passionate about reducing extreme biological risk.
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DATES & LOCATION
The AIxBio Research Fellowship will be held in Cambridge, UK, for 8-weeks, starting on January 26th, 2026.
Why AIxBio Research Fellowship?
We live in an era of rapidly advancing biotechnology and emerging AI capabilities, which are both creating new opportunities and new engineered and biological risk vectors. Our new 8-week, full-time research fellowship is designed to meet this reality.
We want to accelerate research which strengthens global resilience and reduces the likelihood of catastrophic pandemics via building technical and governance safeguards. We think this is one of the most neglected intersection of research, and we are excited to help realise its opportunities by strengthening safeguards and defences.
Help mitigate AIxBiosecurity risks
Our AIxBio fellows will work directly with expert mentors from leading AI and biosecurity teams on concrete research projects while building deep expertise across both the domains. We want to back talent across AI, Biosecurity & Policy.
Some (non-exhaustive!) research directions we are excited about: metagenomic surveillance and anomaly detection; capability evaluations of AI systems relevant to CBRN risk; adversarial robustness and red-teaming for sensitive queries; know-your-customer and verification tooling for synthesis providers; guardrails for biodesign software; and methods such as machine unlearning to reduce retained hazardous knowledge.
2. Work on impactful AIxBio research
ERA has been running fellowships at Cambridge for almost half a decade. We know that transformative research doesn't happen in isolation; it emerges from daily collaboration, spontaneous conversations, and being embedded in a thriving intellectual community.
During the AIxBio fellowship, you will have the opportunity to spend a full two months cultivating deep and life-long connections with other fellows, full-time researchers, and the AIxBio community in and around Cambridge by living and working alongside them. Our dedicated Community Health Manager organises weekly community health events for strengthening the social connections between fellows and the wider Cambridge community.
3. Develop Lasting Connections