Project summary

This funding is to cover the costs of running the initial online version of Pandemic Interventions Course, an introductory biosecurity syllabus, with the end goal of reducing global catastrophic risks by better educating decision makers and by getting promising people into careers related to the field.  

It has been estimated that there is a 2% risk of a covid-like pandemic in a given year, and this risk is increasing over time due to factors such as climate change and advances in dual-use technologies. This course provides an introduction to biosecurity, the risks of future pandemics, and the impact of emerging technologies like AI advances. It also covers a range of interventions to prevent, detect and respond to pandemics such as biotechnological innovations (e.g. pathogen surveillance systems), engineering solutions (e.g. germicidal ultraviolet) and policy approaches (e.g. national responses and international coordination). 

The course is planned to start in May 2025 with ~20-50 participants. Each week of the 4 week course consists of ~1.5 hours of readings followed by 1-1.5 hr discussion sessions. Future versions may be run regularly and at a larger scale, depending on impact and interest. People interested in biosecurity can be directed to the course, which allows promising people to be identified and linked with additional opportunities. Previously I would have directed such people to the Biosecurity Fundamentals course.

What are this project's goals? How will you achieve them?

Main aims of the course:

• Be somewhere to direct people interested in getting into biosecurity, particularly those who may not have sufficient background or time to get involved in projects immediately, to help them increase their engagement

• Act as an initial ‘touchpoint’ to identify interested and potentially promising people, to be able to connect them with relevant people and direct them to further resources

• Help people learn more about biosecurity and pandemic preparedness and next steps they can take for a career in biosecurity (main benefits over just an online resource: deeper understanding through discussions, connecting with others interested in biosecurity, and accountability for learning)

Timing and format: 

• Bluedot Impact will not be running the February 2025 version of the Biosecurity Fundamentals course as they are realigning to focus more on AI-related risks and shorter courses; previously I would have primarily directed people interested in learning more about biosecurity to their course

• EAGxNordics and an EA Student Summit in London will both take place in April 2025. Starting the course in May 2025 allows for people from these conferences to take the course

• An online course allows anyone in the world to take part - potential facilitators from North America, South America, Africa, Europe and Asia have expressed interest

Specific steps to be taken: 

• Make updates to course content (by end of April 2025)

  • Activities: updates based on feedback from November 2024 Effective Altruism UK pilot, update discussion prompts, create a more detailed session plan and update facilitator guidance, get feedback on changes

• Prepare for start of course (April-May 2025)

  • Activities: Create promotional materials, recruit and select facilitators and additional coordinators, facilitator training session, recruit and select participants, allocate cohorts, onboarding, other operational tasks

• Course and followup (starting May 2025)

  • Activities: course itself (4x discussion group sessions), feedback forms, offboarding including directing participants to further resources, payment of facilitators, followup/referral of participants, impact evaluation 
    

How will this funding be used?

Mainline: $6006
Minimum: $2717
Stretch: $10725

Breakdown: 
$2717 to run a course with up to 20 participants and 1 hr discussion sessions
$6006 to run a course with up to 50 participants and 1.5 hr discussion sessions
$10725 to run a course with up to 100 participants and 1.5 hr discussion sessions

For the full budget see here. 

This would cover the full cost of running the pilot course for 20-100 participants (50 participants mainline), including paying coordinators/organisers and facilitators and software costs, and assuming 5 participants per facilitator. 

Additional funding would be used to pay additional facilitators to run a bigger pilot (if between mainline and stretch amount and there is enough coordination capacity), or run a future iteration.

Who is on your team? What's your track record on similar projects?

Project lead:

Lin Bowker-Lonnecker

Past biosecurity course experience: 

• Put together this syllabus in October 2023, updated in October/November 2024. 

• Facilitator and review team member for the September 2024 Bluedot Impact Biosecurity Fundamentals course. The review team provides feedback on the session content before participants complete that week’s session

• Facilitated SERI BITS

She also cofounded and runs Oxford Biosecurity Group, is the research advisor for the biosecurity fellows at Pivotal Research, and provides support for others interested in or doing biosecurity capacity building.

Team:

Zoheb Anjum: Zoheb is an entrepreneur, biomedical and machine learning engineer, and educator who was a facilitator of the Biosecurity Fundamentals course. He also runs the Effective Altruism chapter in Miami.

[Other team members to be confirmed]

~30 people have expressed interest in coordinating or facilitating this course. 27 people filled in the initial facilitator interest form posted on the Biosecurity Fundamentals slack and shared with people who expressed interest in facilitating the Effective Altruism UK pilot; of these 21 selected ‘yes’ and 6 selected ‘maybe’ to the question ‘Are you interested in coordinating or running a version of this discussion group?’, and 2 additional people expressed interest in helping coordinate without filling in the facilitator interest form.

What are the most likely causes and outcomes if this project fails?

Most likely causes and outcomes if this project fails, as well as mitigations to these, are given below. 

Cause: Poor logistics or running of the course, e.g. poor communication, difficulties scheduling, facilitators do not show up for sessions, inconsistency between sessions run by different facilitators
Outcomes: Poor participant experience and/or more participants may drop out, leading to some people being less likely to take next steps in biosecurity or do so later
Mitigations: Paying facilitators and coordinators to help ensure a good participant experience, avoid the added difficulties of volunteer management, and enable more experienced people to facilitate; starting with a smaller course (20-50 participants, or up to 100 if there is enough coordination capacity) and potentially scaling for future versions; session plan to be created and facilitator training to be done to ensure consistency between groups in the course

Cause: Course structure does not lead to participants getting key takeaways e.g. due to course structure, or discussions within sessions lacking focus
Outcomes: Participants have less awareness of important areas within biosecurity (note however that this is an introductory course, and therefore act as a starting point and overview rather than give detailed information about all aspects of biosecurity)
Mitigations: Order of course and readings updated compared to what is currently on the website given different scope to when the course was initially put together (a recommendation was that people did the Biosecurity Fundamentals course after this); update course content based on feedback (including from experts, and people who previously did the Biosecurity Fundamentals course); session plans to be created, discussion prompts and facilitator guidance to be updated, and facilitator training to be done to make sure key topics are discussed

How much money have you raised in the last 12 months, and from where?

Currently applying for grants to enable this course to be run.

Past grants for this course
Manifund grant: https://manifund.org/projects/pandemic-interventions-course---introductory-biosecurity-syllabus
(Funds covered my time primarily to make updates to the syllabus before Effective Altruism UK ran this course in November 2024, as well as website/domain costs).