privacy

U.S. PETs Prize Challenge

Privacy-Enhancing Technology prize challenge for financial crime prevention and pandemic forecasting

Privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) have the potential to unlock more trustworthy innovation in data analysis and machine learning. Federated learning is one such technology that enables organizations to analyze sensitive data while providing improved privacy protections. These technologies could advance innovation and collaboration in new fields and help harness the power of data to tackle some of our most pressing societal challenges.

That’s why the U.S. and U.K. governments are partnering to deliver a set of prize challenges to unleash the potential of these democracy-affirming technologies to make a positive impact. In particular, this challenge will tackle two critical problems via separate data tracks: Data Track A will help with the identification of financial crime, while Data Track B will bolster pandemic responses.

By entering the prize challenges, innovators will have the opportunity to compete for cash prizes and engage with regulators and government agencies. Announced at the Summit for Democracy in December 2021, the prize challenges are a product of a collaboration between multiple government departments and agencies on both sides of the Atlantic. Winning solutions will have the opportunity to be profiled at the second Summit for Democracy, to be convened by President Joe Biden, in early 2023.

You are on the home page for the U.S. side of the challenge. You can find the U.K. challenge here.


Results

The challenge has ended! Congratulations to the winning teams:

Award Phase 1 Phase 2 Phase 3
Concept Papers Track A Track B Red Teams
1st Place MusCAT Scarlet Pets puffle ETH SRI
2nd Place IBM Research PPMLHuskies MusCAT Entmoot
3rd Place Secret Computers ILLIDAN Lab ZS_RDE_AI Blackbird Labs
Special Recognition Visa Research


You can read more about the results of the challenge and meet the winning teams in our "Meet the Winners" blog posts:

The synthetic pandemic outbreaks dataset from Track B of the challenge has also been made available for ongoing learning and development. See the dataset website for more information.



Phase 1: Concept Paper

privacy

Phase 1: Concept Paper

Help unlock the potential of privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) to combat global societal challenges. Develop efficient, accurate, and extensible federated learning solutions with strong privacy guarantees for individuals in the data. #privacy

651 joined
$55,000 in prizes
sep 2022
competition has ended
$55,000

Phase 2: Solution Development – Financial Crime

PRE-APPROVAL NEEDED
privacy

Phase 2: Financial Crime – Federated

Help unlock the potential of privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) to combat global societal challenges. Develop efficient, accurate, and extensible federated learning solutions with strong privacy guarantees for individuals in the data. #privacy

201 joined
$185,000 in prizes
mar 2023
competition has ended
$185,000
PRE-APPROVAL NEEDED
privacy

Phase 2: Financial Crime – Centralized

Help unlock the potential of privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) to combat global societal challenges. Develop efficient, accurate, and extensible federated learning solutions with strong privacy guarantees for individuals in the data. #privacy

201 joined
$185,000 in prizes
mar 2023
competition has ended
$185,000

Phase 2: Solution Development – Pandemic Forecasting

PRE-APPROVAL NEEDED
privacy

Phase 2: Pandemic Forecasting – Federated

Welcome to Phase 2 for prescreened participants! Help unlock the potential of privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) to combat global societal challenges. Develop efficient, accurate, and extensible federated learning solutions with strong privacy guarantees for individuals in the data. #privacy

139 joined
$175,000 in prizes
mar 2023
competition has ended
$175,000
PRE-APPROVAL NEEDED
privacy

Phase 2: Pandemic Forecasting – Centralized

Welcome to Phase 2 for prescreened participants! Help unlock the potential of privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) to combat global societal challenges. Develop efficient, accurate, and extensible federated learning solutions with strong privacy guarantees for individuals in the data. #privacy

139 joined
$175,000 in prizes
mar 2023
competition has ended
$175,000

Phase 3: Red Teams

privacy

Phase 3: Red Teams

Help unlock the potential of privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) to combat global societal challenges. Test the privacy guarantees of blue teams' federated learning solutions. #privacy

14 joined
$120,000 in prizes
mar 2023
competition has ended
$120,000