You're pledging to donate if the project hits its minimum goal and gets approved. If not, your funds will be returned.
EffiSciences, who previously succesfully created ML4Good bootcamps upskilling in AI Safety, is now organizing a BioSecurity focused bootcamp, to upskill and enable participants towards careers reducing biorisks. This will be a 5 day in person bootcamp. The curriculum design and teaching is co-led by Dr. Erwan Sallard and Dr. Sriram Kumar, both post-doctoral researchers in virology and vaccinology, also using materials developed by EffiScience’s biorisks unit who teaches for example a yearly seminar at Ecole Normale Supérieure. More information, including a tentative program are provided at https://effisciences.org/en/events/biorisks-training-camp
This project’s overall goal is to enable further work on biosecurity by bringing more students or early professionals to reorient or accelerate their careers. We achieve this goal by proposing an in person bootcamp with qualified teachers, using a similar format to the succesful ML4Good bootcamps. Over the longer term, we would hope that participants contribute to reducing harm from
Participants will
Acquire the theoretical background necessary to engage with biological risk sources as well as protection and data analysis technologies
Learn fundamentals on biorisk incidents, spreading, effects and cure
Discover governance tools and current initiatives to prevent or contain biological threats
Conduct group work on subjects chosen between epidemiology modelization, hazardous sequences identification in a counter-bioterrorism framework, writing reports on national pandemic preparedness plans, and more
Receive support in designing professional projects in the biosafety field
We (EffiSciences) currently have commited 5k€, which currently only covers lodging, insurance and food (not including rates for a cook) for participants. We hoped to get funding from an Erasmus+ application that fell through, but would like to complete the project with higher quality.
With an extra 1000€ (minimum funding), we will be able to fund part of the travel costs of participants who couldn’t make it otherwise.
With 3000€, we can assist most participants with the travel costs, thereby ensuring they don’t drop out or face collateral damage on their career development.
With 5000€, we can improve food quality and we can compensate our cooks, organisers and teachers somewhat (this is still not close to the market price for the number of hours they have worked on this project for, but can nevertheless increase the chance they want to participate in a future such bootcamp).
Dr. Erwan Sallard will be co-lead facilitator of the camp. He currently works as post-doctoral researcher on adenovirus vectorology (used as vaccines, gene therapy vectors or cancer treatments) at the Witten/Herdecke University. He is also a member of EffiSciences since 2022 and contributed to syllabus writing for the Biorisks Seminar, wrote several popular science articles (https://legrandcontinent.eu/fr/2023/04/26/10-points-sur-lantibioresistance/) and wrote and recorded two videos of the Biorisks series. He also supervised four master students during research internships and tutored high school pupils for two years as part of the TALENS program (https://pesu.ens.fr/talens/).
Dr. Sriram Kumar will be a co-lead facilitator of the camp. He works as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Virology, Münster, investigating the molecular determinants of zoonotic risk of non-human respiratory viruses, using classic reverse-genetic approaches and human-derived 3D experiment models. Dr. Kumar co-initiated and coordinated the EvoPAD Dual-Use Forum within the University of Münster, Germany. He was involved in several policy-related editorials, including the iGEM Policy Research Projects and the iGEM Governance And Policy (GAP) Newsletter. Dr. Sriram Kumar has years of sustained research and facilitation experience, specifically in educating and training youth in the context of pandemic biosecurity and dual-use research of concern.
Tim Doherty will be camp facilitator group leader for the Netherlands. Tim is in the process of earning his masters in International Relations: Global Conflict in the Modern Era at Leiden University. This is being done alongside an undergraduate degree in psychology and while being an active member in EA Leiden whose personal concern is heavily related to areas related to ethics, international security, global cooperation, and the reduction of existential threats
The organization of this bootcamp is supported by EffiSciences, notably by Antoine Sérandour who previously helped securing funding for ML4Good bootcamp, and by Jonathan Claybrough, co-organizer and teacher at ML4Good bootcamps. We thus provide information on the track record of ML4Good. For ML4Good, we assess participant pre and post-camp, and their self-evaluation on their understanding went from 2.76 to 3.47. The average commendation note for camp participants is 9/10. ML4Good bootcamps were found cost-effective enough for OpenPhil, who decided to increase the funding for them to organize more in 2025. You can find public reports from previous ML4Good participants who decided to share about their experience.
Most likley causes of the bootcamp being worse than expected, and mitigations :
If our teachers are ill or have accidents and can't teach
In the worst case, we have other teachers in our network who can fill in
Accidents at the venue
We have experience with organizing and dealing with above issues (eg. we carry first aid kits, ...)
Participant selection was subpar, or too many participants are not able to come (eg. fall ill)
We have a waiting list and can fill in where appropriate
Outcomes if this project fails :
We might have been less cost effective than other interventions to reorient careers towards biorisks mitigation.
We still believe that experimenting with this format will be valuable information to inform future interventions towards upskilling in biorisks.
EffiSciences, from previous fundraising including personal donations, can currently commit 5000€ for this bootcamp. This is not enough for the vision we have, and we are thus fundraising to cover the gap.