SCIENTIFIC COLLECTIVE and ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Guidelines
A competition among students for ideas to improve models of the human body
This competition is the First Round of an effort to improve human scientific collective intelligence in the age of AI.
Details and background information are available at:
https://www.cellcomm.org/ai-and-collective-intelligence
In the First Round a prize of $1,000 for the best student of each participating Institution will be awarded. The prize money has been donated by scientists, but the winners will be chosen by the participant groups themselves. If less than 3 students participate for any Institution the students will form a combined group that will be eligible for the same prize.
This competition is open to students of every discipline and can include both biological details and proposals on how to improve the social and information-exchange aspects of human collective intelligence.
All ideas will be openly shared on the cellcomm.org website and individual recognition will be provided by peers and by senior scientists. The platform is intended to be community-owned, as the best way to ensure broad participation. You are encouraged to suggest how to design it so that it benefits all. The history of Wikipedia shows that open content, allowing the possibility of a fork (an alternative version of the website), contributed to keep it as a non-profit initiative.
When discussing the design of the effort you might consider potential concerns:
- Many have discussed the resistance to innovation in science, including Joel Mokyr (2025 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences) and Bernard Barber, in a highly cited paper. They suggested that this "fear of novelty" is a general human feature, only in part counteracted by the methods of science. The history of the PDB is a recent example where a change in scientific culture was adopted only after a slow process.
- A concern for some could be the fear of being wrong, which Stanley Crooke called in his interview the fear of looking stupid. We encourage brainstorming with humans and AIs, learning from the achievements of our mathematical colleagues. Brainstorming requires sharing tentative ideas and participants will therefore commit not to criticize individuals.
- Another current fear is that of being deceived by people or agents who are not who they say they are, especially when interacting online. It might help to grow by progressively including institutions where at least one scientist is known by the participants.
The following scientists and scholars have agreed to talk to the winning student from their institution about his/her ideas. This is a form a recognition and a way to continue the discussion of the ideas suggested by the students:
- For Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, La Jolla
Guy Salvesen, Graduate School Founding Dean
Kevin Yip, Professor and Director, Center for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence
- For the University of California, San Diego
Napoleone Ferrara, Professor and winner of the Lasker Award and of the Breakthrough Prize
Joshua Graff Zivin, CGT Endowed Chair in Technology Policy
Daniele Micciancio, Professor of Computer Science
- For the University of California, Irvine
Pierre Baldi, Distinguished Professor and Director of the AI in Science Institute
- For the University of California, Riverside
Marcus Kaul, Professor of Biomedical Sciences
Maurizio Pellecchia, Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Sciences
- For San Diego State University
Svasti Haricharan, Associate Professor of Biology
- For Harvard University, Cambridge
Kyle R. Myers, Associate Professor at Harvard Business School and expert in scientific innovation
- For Columbia University, New York
Andrea Califano, Professor of Chemical and Systems Biology and President CZ Biohub New York
- For the University of Notre Dame
Riccardo Lufrani, Adjunct Professor and expert in theology and ethics
- For Michigan State University, East Lansing
Carlo Piermarocchi, Professor of Physics
- For Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore
Tiziano Piccardi, Assistant Professor and expert in social computing
- For the University of Southern California, Los Angeles
Helen Berman, co-founder and previous Director of the Protein Data Bank, one of the first large-scale scientific data sharing resources
- For the Weizmann Institute, Rehovot
Joel Sussman, also co-founder and previous Director of the Protein Data Bank
- For Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok
Watcharapong Hongjamrassilp (WiN), Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Science
- For the University of Melbourne
Laura Edgington-Mitchell, Associate Professor in Biochemistry and Pharmacology
- For the University of Cape Town
Edward Sturrock, Professor and interim Dean for Research
- For the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban
Theresa Coetzer, Professor of Biochemistry
- For GSSI, L'Aquila
Camillo De Lellis, Professor of Mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and at the Gran Sasso Science Institute School of Advanced Studies (GSSI)
- For La Sapienza University, Rome
Francesco Zamponi, Professor of Theoretical Physics
Mattia Crespi, Professor and Director of Sapienza School for Advanced Studies
- For Tor Vergata University, Rome
Sara Savastano, Associate Professor in Economics
Luana Licata, Associate Professor in Biology
- For Bocconi University, Milan
Guido Tabellini, former President of Bocconi University and economic historian
- For the University of East London
Marcello Bertotti, Professor in Community Health
- For Oxford Brookes University
George Blumberg, former Senior Lecturer, Charity Trust Chair
- For the University of Oxford
Trey Ideker, Professor and Director of the Big Data Institute
If you are a student or a senior scientist interested in participating and your institution is not listed above, please contact us at info@cellcomm.org and we will help you to organize it.
The initiative will complement other ongoing efforts in this field. It will help provide the data, knowledge and societal support they need.
The following are examples of possible appropriate submissions, but you should feel free to contribute anything fostering the general aim of the initiative:
- Investigate how work on a problem you are studying can be extended to be part of a larger cell or organism model, beyond what you or your lab could do.
- Identify what is not known within a field or sub-field and suggest methods that could be used to fill these gaps.
- Reflect on how to motivate the participation of scientists in a broad collective effort, preserving individual creativity, and how to address their concerns. Contributions are welcome from scholars from social and humanistic disciplines. Scientists addressing biological details are encouraged to include a paragraph on these aspects of collective intelligence, to ensure that the discussion of this topic is grounded in their experience.
The ideas of those thinking that AI should not be adopted widely in science are also welcome. It would in fact be important for this point of view to be represented. In the submission field for AI interactions, you are free to explain why they were not helpful or why you have not done it.
This comment from Claude Opus 5 might be useful for applicants.
Please submit your ideas on this page.
Submitted student contributions can be seen here.
We expect that in the first round most contributions will consist of approximately one page of text. Other formats are acceptable if you provide a reason for it.
If you use AI please provide, as an attached supplementary file, full details of any AI interactions, including models used, prompts and responses. This will help the community to learn about the most effective AI brainstorming techniques. Every participant will be offered the chance to contribute to a scientific report analyzing the brainstorming methods.
The deadline for submission is December 21st, 2026. It might be natural to submit close to the deadline, but submitting early will increase your chance of getting priority recognition for your ideas. To encourage early discussions, we allow the submission of multiple versions. All the versions will be preserved with a dated record but only the last version will be considered for the competition.
We have funds for 10 financial prizes, which will be awarded to the winning students of the first 10 institutions submitting at least 3 contributions. If more institutions later reach this level, we will attempt to rise more funds. We have reasonable hopes that this might be successful, but it cannot be guaranteed.
Intellectual courage is required to address the unique challenge human science is facing in the age of artificial intelligence. We should not be afraid of changing the forms of our culture, so that the values of science can stay the same.