Biosecurity1–3 hoursGuided
Measure how well a room is ventilated
Use a CO₂ monitor to estimate how often the air in a classroom, office or bedroom is replaced, then test what opening a window or running a fan actually does.
DataPeopleView project
Biosecurity
Preventing and preparing for severe pandemics, including ones made easier by AI.
Overview
Biosecurity work includes cleaner indoor air, better protective equipment, earlier detection of outbreaks and screening of DNA synthesis orders. AI matters here because it could make dangerous biological knowledge easier to access, and because it can also strengthen defences.
You don’t need a lab or a biology degree. Good first projects include measuring ventilation, writing guides, comparing policies and building small tools.
Guided projects 8
Short projects with numbered steps.
Biosecurity1–3 hoursGuided
Build a room air-cleaning calculator
Make a tiny calculator (a spreadsheet, notebook or web page) that tells anyone how much a portable air purifier would clean the air in their room.
CodeDataVisualView project
BiosecurityA weekendGuided
Write the “far-UVC in ten minutes” explainer
Far-UVC light might kill airborne germs in occupied rooms. Write the clear, honest explainer the field is missing: what it is, how it works, what the evidence says, and what is still uncertain.
Reading & writingVisualView project
Biosecurity1–3 hoursGuided
Make a one-page guide to wearing a respirator properly
A great mask that leaks at the sides protects far less than people think. Make a clear, visual guide to fitting a respirator and the most common mistakes.
VisualReading & writingView project
Biosecurity1–3 hoursGuided
Explain DNA synthesis screening in one page
Companies make synthetic DNA to order. Screening those orders and the customers who place them is one of the main defences against engineered pandemics. Explain how it works and where the gaps are.
Reading & writingView project
BiosecurityA weekendGuided
Biosecurity before the year 1000: a history mini-essay
How did ancient and medieval societies protect themselves from plague? Research one historical practice (quarantine, isolation, trade rules) and draw a lesson for today.
Reading & writingView project
BiosecurityA weekendGuided
Make the physics of airborne infection clear
Why does distance matter less indoors? Why does ventilation help? Turn the physics of how infectious particles move and build up in air into a clear explainer or interactive sketch.
VisualReading & writingDataView project
Biosecurity1–3 hoursGuided
Write a page for a biosecurity wiki
The field lacks a friendly wiki. Pick one concept (far-UVC, DNA screening, elastomeric respirators, metagenomic surveillance) and write the clear, well-sourced page you wish existed.
Reading & writingView project
Project ideas 18
BiosecurityA few weeksIntermediateAlready built
Extend Cliver: check whether a customer really works on an organism
Given a researcher’s ORCID ID, return the organisms they have published on, so a DNA synthesis company can quickly check whether a flagged order fits the customer’s research history.
CodeDataView project
BiosecurityA few weeksIntermediateMay be taken
Build a customer-screening training dataset
Expand a handful of existing case studies into 25–40 profiles of legitimate and concerning customers, including historical cases of people who ordered dangerous biological material.
Reading & writingDataView project
BiosecurityA weekendStarterAlready built
Update the biosecurity statements repository
AI biology tools (protein design, CRISPR design and more) sometimes publish biosecurity statements. Add new tools to the repository and compare what they promise.
Reading & writingDataView project
BiosecurityA few weeksIntermediateMay be taken
Design a vulnerability-disclosure process for biological design tools
What should happen when someone discovers that a new tool could break existing defences, such as evading DNA screening? Draft a responsible-disclosure framework.
Reading & writingView project
BiosecurityA few weeksIntermediatePartly covered
Map how suspicious biological orders get reported across countries
Compare how countries handle biosecurity suspicious-activity reports (reporting chains, data storage, privacy, jurisdiction gaps) against the financial sector’s anti-money-laundering systems.
Reading & writingDataView project
BiosecurityA few weeksStarter
Ventilation & air filtration project ideas
The source author’s top priority. Ideas range from DIY measurement to retrofit kits and modelling tools, and most need no lab.
DataVisualReading & writingPeopleView project
BiosecurityA few weeksIntermediate
Far-UVC project ideas
Help far-UVC get from promising to deployed: installation tools, simulations, public-trust research and supply-chain analysis.
CodeDataReading & writingView project
BiosecurityA few weeksStarter
Elastomeric respirator project ideas
Reusable respirators could protect essential workers in a severe pandemic. Many projects here are about evidence, communication and distribution.
Reading & writingVisualDataView project
BiosecurityA few weeksIntermediate
Estimate what a city needs in a pandemic
How many critical workers would a city need to protect? How much indoor space is there? What data would a government want on day one of a crisis?
DataView project
BiosecurityA few weeksIntermediate
Can AI help people protect their homes from airborne disease?
Explore whether AI tools can lower the effort of improving home air quality, or speed up reviewing the built-environment research literature.
CodeVisualView project
BiosecurityA few weeksIntermediate
Is AI actually speeding up drug discovery?
Where is AI actually speeding up work on medical countermeasures, and where are regulation, trials or manufacturing the main bottleneck?
Reading & writingDataView project
BiosecurityA few weeksIntermediate
Review safer frameworks for ordering DNA
Compare “know your customer” and other frameworks for making DNA ordering more secure, drawing on what finance and other industries already do.
Reading & writingView project
BiosecurityA few weeksIntermediate
Antimicrobial surfaces and vapours: what does the evidence say?
Pick one passive protection technology (antimicrobial surfaces, glycol vapours, hydrogen peroxide systems) and review its safety, efficacy and scalability.
Reading & writingDataView project
BiosecurityA few weeksIntermediate
Disease forecasting project ideas
Help forecasters do better: document past model failures, port useful tools, teach the maths, or build early-warning datasets.
CodeDataReading & writingView project
BiosecurityA few weeksIntermediate
Build an open dataset or API for biosecurity
Researchers keep re-collecting the same numbers. Turn one of them into a clean, open dataset or API.
CodeDataView project
BiosecurityA few weeksStarter
Teaching biosecurity: primers, curricula and case studies
Write the primers, problem sheets, curricula and case-study collections that would help the next wave of people get into biosecurity.
Reading & writingVisualPeopleView project
BiosecurityA few weeksIntermediate
Improve guidance on information hazards
When is it safe to publish something like “this mask might fail because…”? Review the infohazard literature and propose clearer guidance.
Reading & writingView project
BiosecurityA few weeksStarter
History of biosecurity project ideas
History is full of biosecurity lessons: policies that backfired, quarantines that worked, and what nuclear governance can teach us.
Reading & writingView project
Also relevant 5
Projects from other themes, and general projects that work in any theme.
Philosophy1–3 hoursGuided
Explain one safety idea to a friend
Write a short, jargon-free explainer of one AI safety idea (reward hacking, sycophancy, compute governance, DNA screening) for someone outside tech.
Reading & writingView project
Technical1–3 hoursGuided
Make a ten-term glossary
Define ten key terms from the theme you’re most curious about, in one sentence each with an everyday example, then compare them with the site’s glossary.
Reading & writingVisualView project
Technical1–3 hoursGuided
Turn a paper into a ten-post thread
Pick a beginner-friendly paper linked from any project on this site and summarise it in ten clear posts: the question, what they did, what they found, and why it matters.
Reading & writingView project
PolicyA weekendGuided
Make one piece of AI safety content
A short video, a carousel, an illustrated explainer or a podcast segment: make one piece of honest, accurate AI safety content for an audience you understand.
VisualReading & writingView project
Governance1–3 hoursGuided
Host a one-hour AI safety discussion
Pick one short reading, invite 4–8 people, and run a focused one-hour discussion with three good questions.
PeopleView project
Mentored research 7
Biosecurity7 h/weekMentored
Biological AI Model Safeguards (opens in a new tab)
Mentees will map the safeguard landscape for biological AI models and evaluate which mitigations hold up. Work spans surveying protein and genomic design models, characterizing existing mitigations across the model lifecycle, and assessing where they fail.
BiosecurityMisuse riskTechnical governance
Starter project: Write a page for a biosecurity wiki or Biosecurity before the year 1000: a history mini-essay
Biosecurity10 h/weekMentored
Attribution Across the Biological Threat Pipeline (opens in a new tab)
Most discussions of genetic engineering attribution focus on post-hoc forensic identification — tracing an engineered pathogen back to its source after release. This project will map the stages between initial intent and execution of a biological attack using engineered pathogens, and examine whether and how identification, evidentiary, or accountability mechanisms could apply earlier in that pipeline, not only at the point of forensic investigation.
BiosecurityMisuse risk
Starter project: Write a page for a biosecurity wiki or Biosecurity before the year 1000: a history mini-essay
Biosecurity10 h/weekMentored
Mapping and Quantifying Alternative Pathways to AI-Enabled Biological Misuse (opens in a new tab)
AI-enabled biological misuse may emerge through multiple interacting pathways rather than a single linear chain of events. This project will build a literature-grounded scenario library, map the causal links and decision-relevant variables within each scenario, and use Bayesian inference (a quantitative risk estimation method developed by Safer AI) to compare how alternative pathways could amplify or mitigate biological risk.
BiosecurityMisuse risk
Starter project: Write a page for a biosecurity wiki or Biosecurity before the year 1000: a history mini-essay
Biosecurity10 h/weekMentored
Identifying function-relevant signatures in protein models for biosecurity screening (opens in a new tab)
This project explores biological foundation models for biosecurity screening, applying interpretability methods to identify biophysically relevant features that can reinforce screening against engineered and AI-designed biological threats.
BiosecurityMechanistic interpretability
Starter project: Explain DNA synthesis screening in one page or Write a page for a biosecurity wiki
Biosecurity15 h/weekMentored
Making unlearning stick in genomic foundation models (opens in a new tab)
Our project plans to test whether UNDO-style noise-and-distillation can make targeted unlearning in genomic foundation models resistant to adversarial fine-tuning, while quantifying the associated compute and performance trade-offs.
BiosecurityMisuse riskTechnical governance
Starter project: Biosecurity before the year 1000: a history mini-essay or Write a page for a biosecurity wiki
Biosecurity7 h/weekMentored
New Evaluations Based on Uplift Study Results (opens in a new tab)
Mentees will build evaluation scenarios grounded in how people actually used AI during a large wet-lab uplift trial. Work spans qualitative coding of interaction logs, comparison against SecureBio's existing benchmark coverage, and piloting new items against frontier models.
BiosecurityEvaluations
Starter project: Write a page for a biosecurity wiki or Biosecurity before the year 1000: a history mini-essay
Courses and introductions
- BlueDot: Biosecurity course (opens in a new tab)Free 30-hour course. No biology background required.
- Preventing catastrophic pandemics (opens in a new tab)80,000 Hours problem profile.
- Is that DNA dangerous? (opens in a new tab)Asimov Press on why DNA orders are screened.
- Navigating dual-use projects in biosecurity (opens in a new tab)BlueDot. Read before starting anything sensitive.
More project ideas
- A hundred project ideas in biosecurity (opens in a new tab)Hatta and Bazarragchaa, 2025. Aimed at independent, part-time researchers.
- Five tractable biosecurity projects you could start tomorrow (opens in a new tab)Langenkamp and Alexanian, 2025. Check the status updates.
- List of lists of concrete biosecurity project ideas (opens in a new tab)Tessa Alexanian.
- Concrete biosecurity projects (some of which could be big) (opens in a new tab)Larger, organisation-sized projects.
- Ideas for AI × bio hackathon projects (opens in a new tab)Weekend-sized projects.