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12 teams from across the U.S. and the UK were announced today as winners of Phase 1 of the PETs prize challenges
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Applications now open to join red teams, which will rigorously test the strength of privacy protections of the most promising solutions in the final phase of the challenges
Today, the UK and the U.S. governments have announced the winners of the first phase of the UK-U.S. privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) prize challenges. Innovators on both sides of the Atlantic are participating across two challenge tracks - using PETs to improve detection of financial crime and forecasting an individual's risk of infection during a pandemic - or designing a solution that would meet both scenarios.
The 12 prize-winning technical papers, selected from 76 entries, set out state-of-the-art approaches to privacy-preserving federated learning, winning a total of $157,000 (£138,000) in prizes. They reflect the breadth and depth of technical talent in both nations and include teams from academic institutions, global technology companies, and privacy start-ups.
The second phase of the challenges, which began earlier this month, will see participating teams build the solutions envisioned in their technical papers. They will also have opportunities to engage with regulators and government agencies, to inform the development of solutions that uphold crucial regulatory principles. Innovators in the second phase will compete for prizes worth a combined $915,000 (£803,000).
The UK and U.S. governments are also opening applications for red teams, who will participate in the third phase of the challenges. Red teams will rigorously test the privacy-preserving capacities of the top-scoring solutions from the second phase of the challenges to assess the final winners. Recruitment for red teams is open here, with applications closing on 23 November. Top-scoring red teams will be awarded prizes from a combined pool of ~$225,000 (£200,000).
The challenge problems being tackled by participants are based on artificially-generated, or synthetic, data sets that are representative of real world use cases, but contain no actual client information. Data being used for the financial crime track is based on synthetic banking data developed by global financial institutions BNY Mellon and Deutsche Bank and synthetic global transaction data created by SWIFT, the global provider of secure financial messaging services, using the MOSTLY AI synthetic data platform. Innovators on the public health track are working with a synthetic dataset created by the University of Virginia's Biocomplexity Institute.
Winning solutions will be profiled at the second Summit for Democracy, to be convened by President Joe Biden in 2023.
Julia Lopez, Minister
