AI Scientist Competition

AI has shifted from passive assistant to active agent: systems now generate hypotheses, design experiments, orchestrate robots, and draft papers. The AI Scientist Competition focuses on autonomous or semi-autonomous scientific systems. (If you are proposing a dataset, please visit the Dataset Competition page.)

What to Include

• Scope & autonomy: Explain which stages of the scientific workflow (ideation, planning, simulation, execution, analysis, writing) your system covers and how decisions are made.
• Architecture & tooling: Describe model components, agent orchestration, retrieval or tool use, robotic integrations, and human oversight checkpoints.
• Evaluation roadmap: Provide benchmarks, metrics, ablation plans, or verification procedures that demonstrate novelty, robustness, and trustworthiness.
• Governance & safeguards: Detail how you manage safety, privacy, biosafety, or dual-use risks, and how attribution/credit is recorded for human collaborators.

Submission Requirements

• Length: 2 pages of main text (PDF) with unlimited references/appendices.
• Format: ICML 2026 style file (double-blind option). Update the template footnote to “Submitted to the AI for Science workshop (ICML 2026).”
• Anonymity: Fully double blind. Remove identifiable metadata, URLs, or repositories.
• Submission portal: OpenReview → AI Scientist Competition.

Evaluation Criteria

1. Scientific ambition & coverage of the end-to-end discovery pipeline.
2. Technical feasibility of algorithms, agents, and hardware/software integrations.
3. Evaluation rigor (benchmarks, metrics, reproducibility).
4. Safety, governance, and transparency (documentation, provenance, alignment with policies).
5. Potential impact on real labs or cross-domain collaborations.

Timeline (AoE)

• Abstract deadline: April 21, 2026
• Submission deadline: April 24, 2026
• Notification: May 15, 2026
• Camera-ready / spotlight materials: May 29, 2026
• Live spotlights: Workshop day at ICML 2026 (July, exact date TBA)

Awards & Support

• Best AI Scientist proposals receive sponsored awards from Xaira Therapeutics.
• Winners present during the workshop and can request introductions to relevant collaborators (e.g., robotics labs or evaluation partners).

Questions? Email ai4sciencecommunity@gmail.com.