We are pleased to share that the Alzheimer’s Disease Data Initiative (AD Data Initiative) today launched the Alzheimer’s Insights AI Prize | Accelerating Discovery with Agentic Intelligence with our communities.
The AD Data Initiative is a coalition of leading advocacy, government, industry, and philanthropy organizations — created through the leadership of Bill Gates and a network of partners, including SYNTHIA Partner Gates Ventures.
The competition offers a $1M first-place prize to accelerate breakthrough artificial intelligence (AI) solutions for Alzheimer’s and related dementia research. It will award a $1 million to the team that develops the most innovative agentic AI solution (AI systems capable of independent planning, reasoning, and action) to accelerate breakthrough discoveries from existing Alzheimer’s data. The final AI tool will be made publicly available via the AD Data Initiative’s AD Workbench, a free, secure, cloud-based research environment that empowers scientists around the world to share, access and analyse data across platforms.
The deadline for applications is September 12, 2025, read more here >
“AI has the potential to revolutionize the pace and scale of dementia research – providing an opportunity we cannot afford to miss out on, especially with so many lives at risk. The Alzheimer’s Insights AI Prize is our call to the global innovation ecosystem to act with urgency.”
Niranjan Bose, Managing Director for Health & Life Sciences at Gates Ventures Interim Executive Director at the Alzheimer’s Disease Data Initiative
With an estimated 152 million people projected to live with Alzheimer's disease by 2050, the Alzheimer’s Insights AI Prize addresses a critical need to accelerate research timelines. Alzheimer’s research faces significant challenges due to the complexity of the disease, which involves multiple biological pathways and may have different underlying causes in patients. It has taken over a century for the first disease-modifying drugs to hit the market and the first simple blood-based diagnostic to be approved by the US FDA and European EMA.
SYNTHIA is proud to be part of this global movement, working alongside partners like Gates Ventures and the Alzheimer’s Disease Data Initiative to harness synthetic data and AI for breakthroughs in personalised Alzheimer’s care. Gates Ventures is industry lead of SYNTHIA Work Package 2 (Business and Sustainability Models) and of the SYNTHIA Use Case Alzheimer's Disease.
The WP2 team is dedicated to ensuring the long-term sustainability and regulatory compliance of the SYNTHIA platform, as well as establishing the appropriate governance structures for its continuation beyond the project lifecycle. The SYNTHIA Alzheimer’s Disease Team tackles the challenge of heterogeneity in disease progression and the difficulty of early diagnosis. By generating synthetic patient populations across different stages (from cognitively normal individuals to mild cognitive impairment and dementia) and combining multi-modal data such as MRI, PET, fluid biomarkers, and cognitive test scores, SYNTHIA enables AI models to emulate clinical trials, simulate treatment responses, and support drug development where real cohort creation is prohibitively expensive or ethically sensitive.
“International and European alliances focused on AI and synthetic data - uniting institutions, disciplines, and borders - will accelerate Alzheimer’s disease research by transforming how we detect, understand, and treat this complex condition.”
Matthew Clement, Director Health & Life Sciences at Gates Ventures
SYNTHIA Partner and WP2 Industry Lead & Use Case Industry Lead Alzheimer’s Disease
Alzheimer’s disease remains one of the most pressing health challenges of our time, demanding bold, collaborative, and innovative approaches. By aligning global initiatives, fostering cross-sector partnerships, and advancing the responsible use of AI and synthetic data, the research community can accelerate progress towards earlier diagnosis and more effective treatments. The Alzheimer’s Insights AI Prize is a great way to bring together research communities worldwide that are working on innovative approaches to tackle Alzheimer’s disease. Together, we can transform the future of diagnosis and treatment by harnessing the power of synthetic data and AI, enabling earlier detection, supporting drug development and paving the way for more personalised care.
The Alzheimer’s Disease Data Initiative is a coalition of leading advocacy, government, industry, and philanthropy organizations that recognizes the need for dementia researchers to find easier ways to share data, analytical tools, and scientific findings. These partners are working together to accelerate progress towards new diagnostics, treatments, and cures for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia.
Gates Ventures is Bill Gates' personal service company and a venture capital firm. The firm invests in early and late-stage ventures, with a particular interest in clean energy, climate change, and Alzheimer's research.
SYNTHIA is a multidisciplinary collaboration of 32 consortium partners - SDG developers, FAIR data experts, clinical researchers, developers of therapies and data-based tools, legal experts, socio-economic analysts, regulatory, policy advocacy, and communication experts - that will provide a 360º vision on how to advance healthcare applications through Synthetic Data use. We are set to revolutionize the field of personalized medicine by harnessing the power of synthetic data (SD). SYNTHIA focusses on 6 impactful diseases: Lung cancer, Breast cancer, Multiple Myeloma, Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, Alzheimer’s Disease, and Type 2 diabetes.
