Overview

In Cambridge, there is a small biosecurity community focused on preventing the worst outcomes from future pandemics, and where possible, preventing them entirely. Our partner organisation, BlueDot Impact, runs an 8-week seminar programme on this topic, for people interested in using their careers to mitigate global catastrophic biological risks.

Understanding and preparing for pandemics in the context of 21st century technological advancements is crucial for global security. The Biosecurity Fundamentals: Pandemics Course is a 12-week, part-time, virtual course focusing on the technical and policy efforts to prevent, detect and respond to catastrophic pandemics. It brings together:

An expert-curated curriculum covering topics from the history of pandemics to concrete policy and technical proposals to reduce pandemic risk.

A community of scientists, policymakers and expert facilitators keen to learn about, discuss and collaborate on proposals to build a more biosecure future.

Course Details

The course is free to participate in.

The course is entirely virtual and can be scheduled around your existing commitments.

You will be onboarded into the Slack community in mid-late Sept 2023, with course sessions starting in the second week of October.

The course is 12 weeks, consisting of 8 weeks of taught content and 4 weeks to work on a project where you start to take your next steps towards contributing to pandemic prevention.

Participating takes about 5 hours / week, including 2-3 hours of preparatory work and 2 hours of small group discussions.

Requirements

We think this course will particularly be able to help you if:

You have a technical background (particularly in biosciences, engineering, materials or data science), and want to learn about how you can use your skills to contribute to pandemic risk mitigation.

You have policy experience, and are keen to apply your skills to reducing risk from pandemics.

You are early in your career or a student who is interested in exploring a future career in technical or policy areas to reduce risk from pandemics.

If none of these examples sound like you, we still encourage you to apply. There are many skills, backgrounds and approaches to pandemic risk reduction we haven’t captured here, and we will consider all applications accordingly.