Full Impact Evaluation Link

Oxford Biosecurity Group aims to have an impact in two main ways: biosecurity capacity building and direct project outcomes. For the full impact evaluation looking at our capacity building impact, please see the full post on our website. The summary has been crossposted below.

With thanks to Conrad Kunadu and Sofya Lebedeva for their edits and feedback, and to everyone else who made OBG possible.

Summary

Oxford Biosecurity Group (OBG) conducts global research projects in collaboration with technical and policy organisations, to foster talent and tackle issues in biosecurity and the intersection of AI and biology. This document summarises the capacity building impact of our two project cycles that were run in 2024: OBG24-1 (7 weeks, January-March 2024) and OBG24-2 (8 weeks, May-June 2024), by looking at career plan updates, skills and connections gained, and next steps of past participants.

In total in 2024, 48 researchers have completed one project cycle, and 3 have completed two project cycles. Outside of the co-founding team, 8 project leads ran projects in one project cycle, and 1 project lead ran projects in two project cycles, and we’ve had researchers or project leads from every populated continent. We identified 31 promising participants for further support and opportunities.

Based on form responses, in OBG24-1, 33% rated OBG to have increased their likelihood of going into a biosecurity career, and another 20% said they decided to do additional research as a result. In OBG24-2, the mean increase in how much people were considering biosecurity as a career path increased by 1.5/10, and the median was 2/10, with the mean and median after projects being 8.4/10 and 9/10 respectively. For both OBG24-1 and OBG24-2, the most frequent skills gained by researchers were ‘deeper understanding of biosecurity’ and ‘research skills’, and the median number of new connections in biosecurity researchers were happy to ask for a favour was 3 (the mean being 3 and 4.4 for OBG24-1 and OBG24-2 respectively).

All participants indicated they would do at least one concrete action relating to getting more involved in biosecurity, including stating they would apply for internships and full-time jobs. The next steps of past participants include Bluedot Impact, Existential Risk Laboratory, founding and directing a non-profit, and continuing with full-time or part-time work with the collaborating organisation.