Geoff Ralston & Charlie Petty
We are looking for fellows with a significant background in the biological sciences and/or a founder's perspective to work on and support the Bio Action Plan.
Stream overview
We would like to work on the Bio Action Plan with the fellow. Exploring what needs to be added, changed, investigated, etc.
The Bio Action Plan is a five-year, $2.5B roadmap for defending against catastrophic biological risk in the age of AI. Its premise is that AI and increasingly accessible biotech are lowering the barriers to engineering dangerous pathogens faster than defenses are improving — and that the defensive technologies largely already exist; what's missing is coordinated, fast deployment. The plan organizes the response into three pillars — Prevent (constraining misuse upstream, e.g. nucleic acid synthesis screening, KYC, AI-bio safeguards), Detect (pathogen-agnostic early warning and diagnostics), and Defend (rapid medical countermeasures, workforce protection, built-environment biohardening, response coordination) — spanning eleven priorities, each with year-by-year milestones. It's maintained as a living document and public progress tracker aimed at coordinating philanthropic, industry, and government action.
Mentors
Geoff was a partner at Y Combinator beginning in 2011 and served as president of the accelerator from early 2019 until the end of 2022. Geoff has worked with hundreds of YC companies like Stripe, Gingko, Clever, Helion and Boom and has been an angel investor in over 100 companies. Earlier in his career Geoff was part of the team that built Yahoo! Mail and was Yahoo!’s Chief Product Officer until 2006. Geoff was also CEO of Lala Media, which was purchased by Apple in 2009.
Mentorship style
Fellows we are looking for
I am looking for fellows with a significant background in the biological sciences and expertise in bio security would be a bonus. A knowledge of public health and pandemic preparedness would also be a bonus. An interest in and strong opinions on these things will be very helpful. I'm also looking for a fellow to take a founder's perspective towards building and organization which can be effective at turning a plan into a reality.