Disclaimer: Although I work on the Groups Team at CEA, I’m offering this in a personal capacity, and this post does not constitute an endorsement or service offered by CEA.

TL;DR: I'm offering personal mentorship to anyone serious about starting a biosecurity group at a top university. I work on CEA's Groups team (whilst also being an Epidemiology student at Oxford) and spend most of my time supporting people launching new groups. I think biosec-specific university groups are especially high-leverage right now, and I want to make it easier for more of them to exist.

Why university biosecurity groups

Biosecurity is talent-constrained, especially for more experienced grad students/seniors who might have high entrepreneurial fit to start new orgs or own a particular part of the ecosystem. Funders I've spoken to consistently say they could deploy more money if they had the people, especially generalists who can start new orgs. It’s relatively clear that the bottleneck for the community is in talented, agentic people who can start their own initiatives. 

AI safety had a version of this problem five or six years ago, and university groups turned out to be one of the most effective interventions for fixing it. A large fraction of new technical researchers and policy hires in AIS over the last few years passed through a university group or an adjacent fellowship at some point. Groups like MIT AIS, Harvard AISST, CAISH and OASI have produced a steady stream of people now working at places like Anthropic, GovAI, and AISI.

Biosec doesn't have a strong presence on university campuses. Biology and public health undergrads, who are the obvious audience (but not the only one), mostly don't encounter GCBR or longtermist-flavoured biosec through default coursework. I’m keen to see groups start to shift discourse towards biosecurity being one of the top problems university students state they’d consider working on. 

One thing to flag: AIS field-building benefited from the topic becoming culturally mainstream, and biosec might not get the same benefits. But meeting curious students (particularly graduates) where they are and giving them a structured path feels worth a shot. I'm especially excited about students at T20 US universities and students at G5 schools in the UK.

What a group actually does

A successful biosecurity group likely runs a Bluedot biosec course, facilitates 1:1 career conversations, and plugs members into the broader ecosystem, towards orgs like BlueDot Impact, ERA, and CG. There's been promising evidence from schools (like Oxford, Cambridge, and Harvard) running mentored research programs. I’ve seen especially strong evidence from EA-adjacent groups betting strongly on EAGs and retreats and would be keen to see this too. 

Why I'm offering this

I work on the Groups team at CEA, where most of my time goes towards managing and incubating EA groups at top universities in the US and UK. This is the hardest part of running a group, and where most failures happen. The first few months can heavily decide the counterfactual impact of the group.

I'm doing this in a personal capacity. CEA doesn't have dedicated support for biosec-specific groups right now, and from talking to would-be organisers I think there's enough demand that one person taking it seriously can have a high tailed impact. 

Apply

If you're interested in starting a group, please send an email to ayushmaan.sharma@dph.ox.ac.uk with the following:

• A brief bio & context on your background (especially any EA/GCBR work you've engaged with)
• Any prior organising experience
• Your vision for the group (1-2 lines)