Win4AISafety - Open Research Summer Challenge

About the challenge

Welcome to the first multi-disciplinary summer challenge organized by SAIN Utrecht. You can participate individually or with a team. You will showcase your passion, ideas, and talent by crafting a short study over 6 weeks. The challenge is about shedding light on underexplored areas of AI Safety, replicating existing studies to perform new analysis, or producing surveys to raise awareness inside and outside the field. Just like professional researchers, you will be working under uncertainty. This is your chance to narrow down broad, general questions into a highly actionable study.

​The challenge in a nutshell:

• ​You can choose any area of AI Safety, including Technical AISF or Governance. We are providing no strict theme or step-by-step guidelines on how to proceed, racking your brain is the only way to go. You will spend 6 weeks defining your scope, conducting your research, and synthesizing your findings.
• ​Working hard for these 6 weeks is for committed individuals eager to show what they are made of. Therefore, your final submission must be a comprehensive essay published as a Substack post.
• You can participate alone or with a team.
• Five mentors are available to help you throughout the challenge.
  

• Participant must be based in the Netherlands.

Dates

• Monday, 6 July 2026 - Hybrid Kick-off event with Challenge Introduction and Jury Panel Discussion on SAIN Research Hub.
• ​Friday, 10 July 2026 - Team Roster Finalization & Networking Drinks.
• Monday, 13 July 2026 - Late sign-up deadline: after this date we no longer accept new participants.
• ​Monday, 17 August 2026, Anywhere on Earth - Substack post submission.

Information on the location for the kick-off event, networking and Winner ceremony can be found on LUMA:

https://luma.com/sain-utrecht-events

Our other channels:

https://linktr.ee/sainutrecht