🧬 Biosecurity Fellowship | apply by 5 Oct

Applications are open our biosecurity fellowship. Understand the efforts to prevent, detect and respond to pandemic threats, and work out where you could contribute. Six units, around 30 hours in total, over six weeks. 🗓 When 12 October to 24 November 2026, six sessions. We set the weekday and the time by survey once places are confirmed, so the sessions land on an evening that works for the whole group. Applications close Monday 5 October. We decide within ten working days of receiving your application, so applying early means hearing back early. Everyone hears back by 8 October at the latest. ⏱ How it works Format. Six weeks at around five hours a week.Each week. Two to three hours of reading and writing on your own, then a two-hour discussion with a small group of peers.Facilitator. Every discussion is facilitated.Where. Online, on Google Meet.Price. Free. ✉️ How to apply Registering on this page is the application. We read every application and reply to everyone. This page is not a meeting link: session dates are set by survey with the accepted group, and the Google Meet link goes out by email before the first session. 📍 Socials in Zürich The sessions are online so that people across Switzerland can take part. We alsoorganise socials in Zürich during and after the cohort, and everyone who can getthere is invited. For most people who end up working on this, the group mattersas much as the material. 📚 What it covers Building a pandemic-proof world. How biological risk has changed, andwhat a world that could absorb the next outbreak would need. Preventing engineered pandemics. Where AI meets biology, screening of DNAsynthesis, and the governance of research that cuts both ways. Detecting early infections. Metagenomic sequencing, biosurveillance, andwhy detection speed sets the limit for everything after it. Blocking transmission. Protective equipment that works, and making indoorspaces harder for a pathogen to move through. Exiting the pandemic. Vaccines and therapeutics at speed: research,trials, manufacturing, procurement. Contributing to biosecurity. Which open problems match your own skills,which programmes and roles exist, and a one-page plan you write yourself. No biology background is needed. The curriculum covers the biology it requiresas it goes. 👥 Who it is for Computer scientists and AI researchers. Biological misuse is one of the mainroutes by which advanced AI could cause large-scale harm, and evaluations,safeguards and synthesis screening are largely engineering problems. Scientists and domain experts. Depth in synthetic biology, aerosol science,immunology or epidemiology is exactly what building defences requires. Builders. Many of the countermeasures this field needs currently exist onlyas drafts in documents. Policy professionals. Dual-use governance, procurement and the BiologicalWeapons Convention are unsolved, and they need people who understand thetechnology well enough to be credible. Anyone who is very good at something. We expect useful profiles from fieldsthat look nothing like biosecurity. In practice we expect master's students, doctoral researchers, postdocs andpeople working in industry, from ETH, UZH, EPFL, Basel and anywhere else inSwitzerland. If none of these describes you and the problem does, apply anywayand tell us why. 🚀 What happens after The last unit exists to make the next step specific rather than vague. After thecohort we offer one-to-one career advising, our paper reading group in Zürich andonline, and concrete pointers to international programmes, fellowships andfunding. The curriculum is adapted from the Biosecurity Course developed by BlueDotImpact and is credited to them as the source. This version is run by the ZurichBiosecurity Hub. BlueDot Impact is not involved in running it. Questions: [email protected] Website: zurichbiosecurity.ch