Exclusive: Famed protein structure competition nears end as NIH grant money runs out
An international scientific competition widely credited with spurring the development of artificial intelligence (AI) for biology appears to be on its deathbed. Known as the Critical Assessment of protein Structure Prediction (CASP), the 3-decade-old competition has run out of funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) and will exhaust emergency support from the University of California (UC) Davis, which oversees the grant, on 8 August. UC Davis has told the two researchers who run the program that their jobs will end in weeks. NIH officials have offered no reassurance about the program’s future, despite repeated inquiries from CASP organizers, who submitted a request to renew their $800,000 grant last year. The agency did not respond to multiple requests for comment. John Moult, a CASP co-founder at the University of Maryland, says contest organizers are “scrambling” to...