Today, Laude Institute is announcing the winners of Moonshots // ONE.
When Andy Konwinski and I sent out a call for the most ambitious AI research on four of humanity's hardest problems - accelerating science, advancing healthcare, strengthening civic discourse, and enabling workforce reskilling - we did not know who would answer, or how.
What came back was 125 proposals from 600 researchers across 47 institutions - virtually every top computer science department in the U.S. and Canada. Fields Medalists, Nobel laureates, and Turing Award recipients pointing their best thinking at problems that matter to everyone. The quality made selection genuinely difficult. Some of the most decorated scientists alive submitted proposals that did not make the cut.
Eight seed grant winners were selected across those four categories. Each team receives $250,000 and six months to develop a full proposal for a $10 million multi-year Moonshot lab.
Accelerating Science
- UCLAKai-Wei Chang; Raghu Meka; Nanyun Peng; Amit Sahai (PI); Terence Tao; Wei Wang
- University of ChicagoIan Foster; Pedram Hassanzadeh; Michael Kremer; Rebecca Willett (PI)
Advancing Healthcare
- Stanford UniversityEmily Fox; Xiaojie Qiu (PI); Marinka Zitnik; James Zou
- Computational Precision Health / UC Berkeley / UCSFAhmed Alaa; Irene Chen; Fernando Pérez; Maya Petersen; Ida Sim (PI)
Workforce Reskilling
- Stanford UniversityErik Brynjolfsson (PI); Tatsunori Hashimoto; Diyi Yang
- Carnegie Mellon UniversityChangliu Liu; Deva Ramanan (PI); Raj Reddy; Katia Sycara; Jun-Yan Zhu
Civic Discourse
- Harvard University / MITMichiel Bakker (MIT); Bailey Flanigan (MIT); Archon Fung (Harvard); Lawrence Lessig (Harvard); Ariel Procaccia (PI, Harvard)
- CornellNatalie Bazarova; Cristian Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil; Jon Kleinberg (PI); Robert Kleinberg; Mor Naaman; David Rand
And then there are the 17 we could not walk away from. We designated 4 runners-up and 13 honorable mentions across all four categories, and we are funding them too — $200,000 for each runner-up, $100,000 for each honorable mention. That brings the full cohort to 25 teams now working on applying AI to what Andy likes to call “species-level” problems.
We look forward to what's sure to be incredible work that comes next, and thank the outstanding applicants for showing us what AI can make possible.
Explore all 25 projects: laude.org/moonshots
— Dave Patterson
Founding Board Chair, Laude Institute
Chair, Moonshots Selection Committee
April 15, 2026
Winners announced
Laude announces eight Moonshots // ONE seed winners, four runners-up, and 13 honorable mentions. See the winners in the Moonshots showcase
November 25, 2025
Final applications deadline
All submission to be considered for the first-ever Laude Moonshots grant due. 120 final applications submitted.
Status Metrics:
Participation:
October 25, 2025
Deadline to submit abstracts
Required submission of 1-2 page abstracts outlining preliminary problem framing, proposed approach, and impact rationale. Used to estimate panel load and finalize review assignments.
October 15, 2025
Townhall with Laude's Dave Patterson and Andy Konwinski
Virtual town hall covering program goals, evaluation criteria, submission guidance, and Q&A with the Moonshots leadership team.
October 8, 2025
Moonshots Selection committee announced
Laude announces its first Moonshots selection committee, a group composed of leading figures in technology, AI research, economics, biomedical science, and public policy. The committee includes Turing Award winners, Nobel laureates, senior research leaders, influential founders, leading economists, prominent AI researchers, experts in biomedical innovation, and policy leaders.
The committee is charged with selecting eight projects for $250,000 seed grants across four areas of broad societal impact (civic discourse, scientific discovery, frontline healthcare, and workforce reskilling), which will serve as the pipeline for a fully funded multi-year Moonshot lab.
June 18, 2025
Official Moonshots call for proposals at SYR Summit
Laude formally launched the first-ever Moonshots program with a public call for proposals at the Laude SYR Summit. The announcement included thematic focus areas, eligibility criteria, funding structure, and the full submission timeline, marking the open invitation to research teams to apply.
Spring 2025
University Roadshow with Dave Patterson and Andy Konwinski
Multi-campus tour across major research universities to introduce Moonshots, gather early feedback, and recruit prospective PIs. Stops include University of California, Berkeley; University of Wisconsin–Madison; University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; UCLA; Caltech; Stanford University; University of Washington; MIT.
December 2024
Shaping AI's Impact on Billions of Lives released
Shaping AI's Impact on Billions of Lives, presenting a blueprint for how AI can be steered toward global benefit, is published. The authors include Mariano‑Florentino Cuéllar, Jeff Dean, Finale Doshi‑Velez, John Hennessy, Andy Konwinski, Sanmi Koyejo, Pelonomi Moiloa, Emma Pierson, and David Patterson.
Key areas of study covered by the document include employment and workforce adaptation, education and learning systems, healthcare and medical-AI innovation, information/disinformation and civic discourse, entertainment/media impact, governance/national-security, and broad human-AI collaboration.