SecureBio Selected to Develop Bio-Evals for the European Commission

The European Commission’s AI Office has chosen SecureBio to develop biological threat evaluations to support implementation of the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act. This represents SecureBio’s second major government contract for such evaluations, following an earlier award from the US government’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation.

SecureBio is part of a consortium led by FAR.AI that won Lot 1 of the EU AI Act’s “Technical Assistance for AI Safety” tender. The consortium will monitor how AI might create risks by expanding access to chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) threats. Other consortium members include SaferAI, GovAI, Nemesys Insights, and Equistamp.

Over three years, SecureBio will focus on four main areas:

Delivering pre-made biological evaluations by integrating established evaluations like their Virology Capabilities Test into the Commission’s assessment framework.

Developing custom evaluations to address gaps in current coverage of biological threat scenarios.

Performing quality assurance and human baselining to establish rigorous standards, including studies calibrating AI performance against expert benchmarks.

Building evaluation infrastructure to streamline the biological evaluation process for consistent assessment of frontier models.

Executive Director Ben Mueller stated: “AI is poised to bring about tremendous progress in the medical and life sciences. At the same time, the technology generates risks that need to be better understood.”