Longtime grantee David Baker won a Nobel Prize! Read more about the work of Baker and his colleague Neil King in our grantee spotlight on their use of computational protein design to advance vaccine technology.

We announced the launch of a new focus area: accelerating economic growth in low- and middle-income countries.

We wrote about five exciting grants from our Scientific Research portfolio.

We published a list of giving opportunities suggested by Open Phil program staff, as well as notes from program and operations staff on where they personally donated in 2024.

As part of our “Day in the Life” series, People Operations Associate Nick Ravazzolo wrote about his day-to-day work. 

Research Fellow Luca Righetti published an essay on Planned Obsolescence arguing that OpenAI hasn’t clearly established that its o1-preview model can’t help novices make chemical and biological weapons.

Matt Clancy, who leads our Innovation Policy program, co-wrote a piece with Caroline Fry on whether training scientists in low- and middle-income countries helps to build local research capacity.

Lewis Bollard, our Program Director for Farm Animal Welfare, wrote about major wins for farmed animals in 2024. He also wrote about how the U.S. election results will impact farmed animals.

Senior Research Analyst Joe Carlsmith published a response to the recent Anthropic report on alignment faking in large language models.

Our grantee the Coalition for Global Hepatitis Elimination announced the launch of the Center for Operational Research for Hepatitis B (COR-HEPB) — the first global center dedicated to coordinating investments and research on hep B.

Senior Program Officer Ajeya Cotra participated in a panel discussion about AI at the New York Times DealBook Summit. The full panel is available here. 

The World Bank mentioned Open Phil’s contributions to the Partnership for a Lead-Free Future (which the Bank has also joined). 

Open Phil’s grantmaking was briefly mentioned in a Vox piece about effective giving.

Inside Philanthropy published a profile of Open Phil. It focuses primarily on lead work, but also covers tuberculosis research and our Global Health and Wellbeing portfolio more broadly. [paywalled]  

Santosh Harish, who leads our work on South Asian air quality, published a piece in Economic & Political Weekly about India’s National Clean Air Programme. [paywalled] 

Deena Mousa appeared on The Economist’s “The Intelligence” podcast to discuss why iodine deficiency is on the rise in the U.S.

Program Associate Abhi Kumar is quoted in a Forbes article about the regulatory challenges facing alternative protein company Solar Foods — he argues that both EU and U.S. regulators are moving too slowly on novel protein approvals.

Research Fellow Oliver Kim appeared on The Atlantic’s “Good on Paper” podcast to discuss the effects of Taiwan’s 1950s land reforms. He also appeared on “Ideas Untrapped” to discuss African economic growth and the challenges of industrialization. Oliver often writes about related topics on his Substack, Global Developments.

More than a dozen of our grantees were featured on Vox’s “Future Perfect 50” list. 

Shortly after the launch of the Lead Exposure Action Fund (LEAF), Nicholas Kristof wrote a piece on lead exposure for the New York Times. Kristof discusses Pure Earth, one of LEAF’s first grantees.

Inside Philanthropy also wrote about the work of our grantee, Cures Within Reach. [paywalled]

Our grantee Epoch AI was recently featured on the New York Times’ “2024 Good Tech Awards” list. “Epoch AI’s work has brought much-needed rigor and empiricism to an industry that often runs on hype and vibes,” wrote columnist Kevin Roose.

The Times reported on research by our grantee Dr. Michael Fischbach to develop vaccines that can be applied as a cream rather than administered through needles.

The New York Times covered snakebite therapeutics research by professors at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM); we’re currently supporting some of that research.

A Director of Government Relations to build and lead our engagement with policymakers and help shape how Open Philanthropy is understood in DC (deadline 1/19).

A Policy Advisor/Senior Policy Advisor to lead our U.S. AI policy engagement and advocacy work (deadline 2/2).

Operations roles based in either SF or DC (rolling deadline).

A variety of funding opportunities, including fellowships, scholarships, support for group organizers, and funding for career development and transition.  

A general application to let us know you'd be interested in working at Open Philanthropy.