Spend 15 weeks in London doing high-impact biodefense projects with expert mentorship.
Know someone who'd be great? Recommend and receive $1,000 if we accept them.
Biodefense talent is bottlenecked. The field needs more serious researchers, entrepreneurs, policymakers, executors working on frontier threats — including PPE, biohardening, detection, and adjacent areas. The fellowship exists to grow that group.
Weekly 1-on-1s with established experts providing methodological expertise, critical feedback, and strategic direction.
Pivotal's dedicated project and research managers help you scope projects, stay on track, navigate blockers, and plan your career.
In-person co-working at the London Initiative for Safe AI. Lunch and dinner included weekdays.
Stipend plus travel to London, housing support for non-London fellows, and the resources you need for your research to succeed.
Q&A sessions with leading domain experts and hands-on workshops to sharpen your thinking and expand your network.
Up to 2 months of continued financial support, mentorship, management, and workspace for strong projects.
Fellows work on projects defined by their mentors. We're particularly excited to support projects on:
Next-generation personal protective equipment for catastrophic biological threats.
"Biohardening" — interventions that reduce transmission at population scale.
Early-warning systems and pathogen-agnostic surveillance approaches.
…plus adjacent areas of biosecurity. Fellows produce research papers, policy reports, blog series, open-source tools, documented repos, and similar outputs.
PhD Student at University of Oxford / Graduate Research Fellow at SecureBio
Senior Program Associate, Biosecurity and Pandemic Preparedness at Coefficient Giving
Visiting Research Fellow at American Enterprise Institute
Biosecurity Field Specialist and Technical Communications at Amodo Design
Co-Founder, Discovery & Strategy at SynX Therapeutics
Built Environment Program Director at Blueprint Biosecurity
Executive Director of Blueprint Biosecurity
Senior Fellow at Blueprint Biosecurity
This project assesses the capabilities of AI-enabled and non-AI biological tools relevant to hazardous-virus design and examines their implications for biosecurity risk.
This project automates viral threat detection by screening viral genomes for high-risk recombination events. It applies a sliding-window algorithm across sequence junctions in NCBI and CASPER metagenomic data, producing a quantitative “surprise score” that automatically flags novel, anomalous viral variants for early biosurveillance triage.
This project revises and expands Coefficient Giving’s practical guide to household protection during extreme biological events, covering methods for reducing exposure through air, food, water, surfaces and other pathways. It assesses existing recommendations, identifies evidence gaps and develops clearer guidance for maintaining protection throughout prolonged emergencies.
This project, conducted with Sebastian Oehm and Askar Kleefeldt at SynX Therapeutics, maps global macrocyclic-peptide manufacturing capacity and its supply-chain vulnerabilities. It tests whether rapid-response therapeutics could be produced at population scale during a severe pandemic or deliberate attack, including threats enabled by AI-driven biological design.
This project ranks candidate experiments by cost, timeline and decision-relevance, and establishes the funding decision rules to pre-commit to before results arrive.
This project assesses whether genome language models can identify viruses that are increasingly different from those in their training data, informing both detection efforts and assessments of the models’ own capabilities.
You apply to work with one or more mentors. Shortlisted candidates move on to the video interview, a work task and a personal interview.
You, your interests, mentor preferences. · 1–2h
Short recorded interview.
Mentor-specific research exercise.
With the team or your mentors.
Primarily PhD students and early-career professionals, plus outstanding undergrads. Backgrounds we've seen across our fellowships include biology, public health, ML, policy, and physics. Your background matters less than motivation and ability.
If you're reading this, probably yes. The fellowship is selective, but that alone shouldn't put you off. If your interests and background seem like a plausible fit, applying is often worth it.
You need to apply to at least one mentor. That said, there's often room to shape the project together with the guidance of your mentor.
A written application (~1–2 hours), then for shortlisted candidates: a short video interview, a mentor-specific work task, and a personal interview.
Fellows are in-person at LISA in London. We make rare exceptions for people with a strong independent research track record. If you can't fully be in-person, apply either way and flag it in the form.
The fellowship is full-time. Small side commitments are usually fine and you can mention them in your application.
Some mentors have fellows work in teams, others work one-on-one. Either way, collaboration between fellows is common and encouraged.
Research papers, policy reports, blog series, open-source tools, documented repos, and similar formats — depending on what suits the project. You retain ownership over your research.
No, Pivotal will not employ you, but we'll have a stipend agreement. Meeting entry requirements is your responsibility — we have an info doc on entry requirements and can sometimes help with the process.
We cover travel to and from London. If you don't already live here, you'll receive housing support on top of the stipend.
The field needs more good researchers working on frontier biological threats. The Frontier Biodefense Fellowship is our first dedicated biosecurity programme, alongside our existing AI safety fellowship.
Yes, have a look at Get involved on our About page, or just get in touch.
