Prize Challenge

Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (PETs) Prize Challenge: Advancing Privacy-Preserving Federated Learning

Privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) present an opportunity to harness the power of data in a manner that protects privacy and intellectual property, enabling cross-border and cross-sector collaboration to solve shared challenges. Innovators in these challenges developed state-of-the-art privacy-preserving federated learning solutions that help to tackle the barriers to the wider use of these technologies. Ran in parallel with the challenge sponsored by the U.K.’s Center for Data Ethics and Innovation, the U.S. prize challenge was co-sponsored by NIST and the National Science Foundation, in coordination with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

The U.S.-U.K. collaboration on the PETs prize challenges was first announced at the Summit for Democracy in December 2021. In addition to competing for a combined U.S.-U.K. prize pool of $1.6 million (£1.3 million), winning solutions was featured at the 2^nd Summit for Democracy in the spring of 2023.

News

At Summit for Democracy, the United States and the United Kingdom Announce Winners of Challenge to Drive Innovation in Privacy-enhancing Technologies That Reinforce Democratic Values (March 2023) | Press Release

Winners Announced in First Phase of UK-U.S. Privacy-Enhancing Technologies Prize Challenges (November 2022) | Press Release 

U.S. and U.K. Launch Innovation Prize Challenges in Privacy-Enhancing Technologies to Tackle Financial Crime and Public Health Emergencies (July 2022) | Press Release 

U.S. and U.K. Governments Collaborate on Prize Challenges to Accelerate Development and Adoption of Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (June 2022) | Press Release

US and UK to Partner on Prize Challenges to Advance Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (December 2021) | Press Release