Announcements:

• We launched the Strep A Vaccine Fund, a multi-donor effort to accelerate the development of vaccines against Strep A, a pathogen that kills more than 600,000 people a year.

Hiring: 

We're hiring an Operations Coordinator/Associate based in San Francisco or Washington D.C. As always, if your referral results in a hire, you'll receive $5k as a thank you.

New writing:

• We published a blog on how we do remote and in-person work at CG, with reflections from four staff on what working from D.C., SF, NYC, and Brasília is like.
• Deena Mousa was profiled in our latest Day in the Life, walking through what it's like to be a program officer on GHW Cause Prioritization.
• Chris Webster wrote about how CG has integrated AI into our work: what we've built, where AI helps and falls short, and what he's learned rolling out new tools across the org.
• George Rosenfeld shared a personal letter to friends and family making the case that AI could transform the world within years and that the current trajectory is cause for concern.
• Jeremy Klemin wrote about how Georgia Tech engineer Saad Bhamla, working with Thai researchers Kiatichai Faksri and Noppadon Nuntawong, is building a sub-$100 Raman spectroscopy device that could transform TB testing in low-resource settings.

Opportunities:

• We launched a $10M RFP on Alternative Protein R&D — read our EA Forum post about it here. Applications are due August 10, 2026.
• Our RFP for Humane Fish Slaughter Research/Prototypes is open through July 1, 2026. Funding is available for projects that materially improve the welfare of fish at capture and slaughter.
• We also have a variety of other funding opportunities available, including fellowships, scholarships, support for group organizers, and funding for career development and transition.

Wild Animal Initiative’s latest research on the representation of veterinarians in wildlife research, with a special focus on wild animal welfare science, was published in Research in Veterinary Science. The lead author is WAI Research Manager Michaël Beaulieu.

The paper first establishes a baseline for the representation of veterinarians in wildlife research. Along with Michaël, 14 students from the UniLaSalle Veterinary College in France examined the educational backgrounds of the authors of more than 5,000 articles published in animal behavior, conservation, ecology, and physiology over the last 10 years. They found that the representation of veterinarians was modest in well-established wildlife research disciplines, with only 3% of articles having at least one author with veterinary training.

Following the same procedure, they also examined the representation of veterinarians in the emerging field of wild animal welfare science. They found that almost half of wild animal welfare articles in animal welfare journals included at least one veterinary author. This high representation may be a reflection of veterinary students’ early interests in animal welfare and wildlife, of the role of animal welfare in veterinary education, and of veterinarians’ belief that wild animal welfare research has practical applicability. (Note that these findings and interpretations should be read cautiously, though, since the number of wild animal welfare articles found was relatively low.)

Michael says he would have been delighted to come across a paper like this when he was a young veterinary student interested in both research and wild animals. Seeing how feasible it is for veterinarians to get involved in wildlife research would have given him confidence to take my career in an unconventional direction, which is a key part of field-building.

Despite some limitations, the article also suggests that veterinarians may be better prepared to conduct research in wild animal welfare than in any other wildlife research discipline. But if veterinarians are to come to view wild animal welfare research as a safe professional pathway, the emerging field of wild animal welfare science will need to offer them more career opportunities. And that will require growth in the field — in its community, in its activities, in its recognition, and in the resources at its disposal.