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    Arc Institute Launches 2026 Virtual Cell Challenge

    The challenge requires models to predict perturbation responses in previously unseen cell contexts.

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    2 Sources, 41d ago, first seen 41d ago

    TLDR

    Arc Institute announced that the 2026 Virtual Cell Challenge is now open for submissions with an active leaderboard. The task requires models to perform zero-shot prediction of how cells respond to perturbations in contexts absent from any Challenge-specific training data. Patrick Collison noted the $100,000 grand prize sponsored by NVIDIA, 10xGenomics, and UltimaGenomics. The institute's site states that no training set is being released and that the evaluation dataset is more expansive than last year's.

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    2 Sources, first seen 41d ago

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    2 Sources

    @arcinstituteThe 2026 Virtual Cell Challenge has begun! Submissions and the leaderboard are now open. This year's task: multi-context generalization and zero-shot prediction. Models will need to predict perturbation responses in cellular contexts with no Challenge-specific training data. https://arcinstitute.org/news/virtual-cell-challenge-2026
    @patrickcThe 2026 @arcinstitute Virtual Cell Challenge just launched. The grand prize is $100,000, sponsored by @NVIDIA, @10xGenomics, and @UltimaGenomics. There's a lot of interest in virtual cells these days: ML models of cells that can complement wet lab experiments. (You'll always need the wet lab to validate results, of course. But ML models can in principle search far more efficiently.) A practical challenge in the field is that benchmarking is quite difficult: cells are very complicated, and it's not a priori obvious how to compare two different models. So, inspired by the CASP protein folding contest, we're running the Virtual Cell Challenge to create a standardized way for teams around the world to compare the efficacy of different approaches, to spread awareness of what works, and ultimately -- we hope -- to support faster progress overall. https://arcinstitute.org/news/virtual-cell-challenge-2026

    2 Sources

    @arcinstituteThe 2026 Virtual Cell Challenge has begun! Submissions and the leaderboard are now open. This year's task: multi-context generalization and zero-shot prediction. Models will need to predict perturbation responses in cellular contexts with no Challenge-specific training data. https://arcinstitute.org/news/virtual-cell-challenge-2026
    @patrickcThe 2026 @arcinstitute Virtual Cell Challenge just launched. The grand prize is $100,000, sponsored by @NVIDIA, @10xGenomics, and @UltimaGenomics. There's a lot of interest in virtual cells these days: ML models of cells that can complement wet lab experiments. (You'll always need the wet lab to validate results, of course. But ML models can in principle search far more efficiently.) A practical challenge in the field is that benchmarking is quite difficult: cells are very complicated, and it's not a priori obvious how to compare two different models. So, inspired by the CASP protein folding contest, we're running the Virtual Cell Challenge to create a standardized way for teams around the world to compare the efficacy of different approaches, to spread awareness of what works, and ultimately -- we hope -- to support faster progress overall. https://arcinstitute.org/news/virtual-cell-challenge-2026