In six months full-time fieldbuilding, the Cambridge Biosecurity Hub (CBH) has helped launch two biosecurity fellowships (with around half of one cohort already in biosecurity jobs), hosted a 90-person symposium, and helped connect dozens of people into biosecurity careers and collaborations. This post aims to share the work CBH has done so far and show the start of what’s possible with dedicated biosecurity fieldbuilding.
The story of CBH
CBH was founded in November 2023 by Sandy Hickson and Grace Braithwaite (me). Sandy was doing a genetics PhD and I had just moved from working as a doctor in the NHS into an Operations role at Meridian Cambridge. In those first two years, we ran a reading group and a speaker series which doubled our regular membership. Our biggest event was the Biosecurity Symposium in Autumn 2024, a day-long conference with around 100 attendees and an impressive speaker lineup.
By late 2025 we had more potential projects than time and funding could support, and we thought it was time to get a full-time employee, and Coefficient Giving agreed. I started working full-time at CBH in November 2025 and CBH has achieved a lot in its first 6 months.
Launching Biosecurity fellowships
One gap that kept coming up was the lack of biosecurity fellowships for people wanting to upskill in biosecurity or try it out. The ERA fellowship in Cambridge have run successful full-time AI fellowships for around 5 years, and CBH collaborated with them to add a dedicated AIxBio stream in their Winter Fellowship earlier this year. The mentors were world experts in the AI and biosecurity intersection and the cohort was very impressive with around half now in biosecurity jobs. Their summer fellowship applications are open now! CBH also helped SPAR to add a biosecurity stream to their amazing part-time fellowship which is a great opportunity for people to boost their CV whilst still in jobs or university. Pivotal and the Cambridge Boston Alignment Initiative have also launched biosecurity fellowships. It’s been really exciting to see a growing number of options for people to upskill in biosecurity research skills.
Building a collaborative network
A fair chunk of CBH’s work is as a connector in the biosecurity field. When people are looking for collaborators, speakers or networking, we can draw on CBH’s extensive network of biosecurity contacts to find useful connections. A lot of these calls also involve giving career advice and there is still a need for clear career guides and resources to help people find their fit in the biosecurity space.
Being full-time has meant there has been time to make some existing community infrastructure projects more robust. I co-lead monthly Europe biosecurity calls with Chris Strahle - this is not a CBH project, but it helps the community of people working in pandemic preparedness in Europe connect. CBH has also been involved in bringing together biosecurity fieldbuilders from across the globe to share resources and opportunities across our networks.
Beyond that, CBH is helping to run an AIxBio hackathon with Apart and BlueDot, and advises on a number of other projects.
Cambridge as an in-person hub
The in-person side of CBH matters a lot. Our largest event so far this year was the AI x Bio Symposium at the Cambridge Union in March which was during the AIxBio Fellowship final week to allow their fellows to present posters. I was really happy with how this event went - we had over 90 attendees, and feedback showed 92% found it valuable and 89% made at least one useful connection. We also host regular speaker events, socials and will be running an ‘Introduction to Biosecurity’ series next academic term. Our in-person professional community is growing too, with at least 4 of us working daily out of Meridian.
One thing that is critical to CBH’s success is our ‘Monday working group’. This is an invite-only group of people that is high trust, consistent, full of curious people and existed long before CBH was started. When I first joined this weekly group and met Richard Moulange, Phil Palmer, Josh Blake and Sandy Hickson, I had only just heard about biosecurity. It is because of them, and this group, that I became so inspired to work on this problem and eventually left medicine behind. I'm probably the first person to pivot to working full-time in biosecurity because of our hub in Cambridge, but I’m not the only one!
I plan to write more about our work at CBH on our substack, website or LinkedIn to stay up to date.
And a reminder that the Coefficient Giving RFP for biosecurity fieldbuilding projects right now (until the 11th May)!
