Last year over 640 people applied to the Encode Fellowship. We could fund 10.
That number stayed with me. Not only because of who we turned away, but because of what it revealed: a generation of exceptional AI researchers looking for problems worth their talent, and no clear map to find them. Meanwhile, the labs at the frontier of science have the opposite problem. World-class domain expertise, hard data, questions AI could crack. And no reliable way to reach the people who could crack them.
We saw an opportunity to help convene the people, data, and scientific problems at the frontier of AI for Science.
Today Pillar VC is launching the Encode: AI for Science Challengescape - a living directory of open problems in science, each one submitted by a researcher at the frontier: a lab with the expertise, the data, and a question that AI could move. It's the same tool we use internally to match our Fellows to projects and collaborators. Now it's open to everyone.
Each Challenge Area comes directly from researchers working on frontier problems that would benefit from collaboration with exceptional ML talent. Unlike a static directory, Challengescape is designed to keep growing: as more researchers add their challenges, more AI/ML talent engages with the platform, and more funders and partners gain visibility into where the field's biggest gaps and opportunities actually lie.
- If a challenge interests you, reach out directly to the point of contact.
- If you have a challenge worth working on, share it with us.
- If you're exploring an early company idea, reach out to the Pillar VC UK team.
Thank you to our Faculty Partners, and to the 120+ leading researchers who have already joined the map, for their continued collaboration.
The most consequential companies and research breakthroughs of the next decade will be built in AI for Science. The Encode: AI for Science Fellowship is a program for technical AI researchers with founder ambitions — backing ~12 Fellows annually to translate frontier research into venture-scale companies. Express early interest in Cohort 3.
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