Advancing the research,
talent and organisations
for mitigating risks at the interface of AIxBiosecurity 

A 10-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 18th - March 26th, 2027

Our Mission: advance the scientific and policy breakthroughs required for tackling biosecurity risks, including those amplified by recent advances in AI.

Why this fellowship

Frontier AI capabilities are advancing faster than biosecurity resilience

Frontier AI is becoming more capable at biological reasoning, design and research automation. In parallel, advances in biotechnology are expanding our ability to understand and engineer biological systems themselves. These advances could accelerate discovery across the life sciences, but could also make dangerous capabilities more accessible to malicious actors. We need to significantly accelerate biosecurity work.

The AIxBio Research Fellowship supports researchers & entrepreneurs across AI, the life sciences and policy to take ownership of this work, from research projects to founding new organisations in this space. Fellows will spend ten weeks in Cambridge, working on a concrete open problem in the field supported by expert mentors and dedicated research managers. From testing biological safeguards for AI models to strengthening synthesis screening, our aim is to accelerate work which improves society’s resilience to biological threats.

Our Mission
Researchers discussing a poster at an ERA event.

Take ownership of open problems in biosecurity

There are still many important questions in biosecurity that nobody has really solved. Which biological capabilities are missed by current AI evaluations? How robust are safeguards under deliberate misuse? What would make synthesis screening effective across providers? We want to back researchers and entrepreneurs willing to investigate questions like these in depth and take responsibility for making progress.

With expert mentors and dedicated research managers, our fellows will work on a concrete part of a larger biosecurity problem. The fellowship provides focused time and practical support to pursue that work. We want projects to contribute to concrete advancements in biosecurity, and we also provide the most promising research + fellows a basis to continue beyond the programme via our 6mo+ Research Scholar positions.

Explore resources

Biosecurity needs a sustained, collective effort

ERA has run programmes in Cambridge for over half a decade. We've learnt that breakthrough work emerges from people who are embedded in a thriving intellectual community, including the spontaneous conversations and spontaneous collaborations this brings. We think that reducing catastrophic biological risk requires sustained work across research, industry and government contexts, and progress in this field really depends on people who can connect these efforts and take responsibility for the gaps between them.

The fellowship brings researchers together in Cambridge around a shared commitment to biosecurity, and we want these relationships to support sustained research and new initiatives beyond the programme. Our ambition is to help build a community of people who take responsibility for neglected biosecurity problems, and can draw on one another’s judgement and expertise as they work to make concrete progress on them.

About the fellowship
Researchers in conversation at an ERA event.

Applications for the AIxBiosecurity Fellowship will be opening soon

Further resources

Selected readings on catastrophic biological risk, biosecurity strategy and the implications of advances in AI.

Biosecurity strategy

Industry perspective