bumblekite

Machine learning summer school in health, care and biosciences

The summer of ‘25 🎶

21st - 29th June 2025
Zürich, Switzerland

"Each time I reach out to one of the lecturers, I am reminded of a line from your website that resonated deeply with me: "Meeting so many remarkable people in such a short period felt like using a cheat code in a video game!" 
This perfectly captures how I felt after participating."

What does the most impactful moment of your career look like?
Let’s create it together.

30+ lecturers 60+ Bumblekite hours ~100 participants 20+ countries

table of contents

• lecturers

• testimonials

• schedule

• day-to-day at Bumblekite

• your application

• logistics

Bumblekite is FOUR’s machine learning programme in health, care and biosciences.

Bumblekite cultivates a learning space designed to assist you in evolving your skills - in AI, data science and engineering, domain-specific expertise or essential leadership capabilities such as writing, coaching and strategy development. Equally importantly, we support you in evolving your mindset with new mental models that deepen your understanding of the world we live in and the beautiful intricacies of healthcare systems we aim to innovate, bringing newly uncovered depths and clarity. We strongly believe the combination of all of the above is key to unlocking the positive, deeply impactful contributions you will lead in our field and beyond.

We are looking for individuals with up to 5 years of AI and data science experience, irrespective of your seniority, who are studying or working at the intersection of bio and computing - or with a keen interest towards it. You can read more about what inspired the evolution of our participant profile in our lessons learned.

You are looking for a premier summer opportunity to deepen your skills and build impactful and enriching relationships within this exciting interdisciplinary area with the aspiration of becoming the decision-maker and leader of tomorrow in our field that is rapidly reshaping the health and care systems across the globe as we know them today.

A perfect match.

To further our commitment in assisting you in your most ambitious career leaps, we launched Bumblekite research in 2023 - built on feedback from people that came before you: our Bumblekite participants. This global effort provides unique data insights to help you and your workplace drive your best, career-defining work. To achieve this, we have partnered with the best of us: LinkedIn with its powerful Economic Graph and dozens of leaders from top organisations in our ecosystem. We invite you to read more about it here. 

To continue nurturing and investing into our community - the key engine behind all of our endeavours - we are looking to evolve our Bumblekite week into a nationwide celebration of the crossroads between biomedicine, health, care and AI. This year, we seek to weave our programme even more deeply into the fabric of Swiss healthcare landscapes.
More on this endeavor to be added shortly.

Join us?

Throughout our Bumblekite MLSS week, our priority is to thoughtfully design opportunities for you to learn from and connect with a diverse group of top leaders working at the fourfronts (word pun intended) of machine learning, health, care, sustainability and interdisciplinary collaboration. Our invited lecturers are not only pioneers in their respective fields but also, just as importantly, incredible people.

More lecturers to be added shortly.

We are delighted that André will be joining us to discuss his very first book, The New Nature of Business. As AI continues to shape health, care and biosciences, it is crucial to design our energy-intensive technologies with efficiency and sustainability at the fourfront.

Each participant will receive a copy of the book in your welcome package. We look forward to celebrating the joys of reading and engaging in a fierce discussion on how we can place nature at the heart of our AI, engineering, and data science ambitions - together with him.

One of the features of our programme we are most proud of are the proactive statements from leaders seeking to return to it, such as: “When is it taking place this year? I need to block this time in my schedule.” :) This Bumblekite element also serves as our way of recognising many of the people listed below who contributed to the programme in its previous iterations.

Some of the most valuable and rewarding days of my professional life have been those when I deliberately chose to step out of the daily juggle and make time for what I truly believe matters.

This summer, I had the privilege of lecturing at the Bumblekite Summer School in Switzerland. Bumblekite’s concept is so compelling, it’s hard to believe these institutions haven’t spread worldwide. As healthcare increasingly depends on algorithms, it’s crucial to bridge the skills gap between biology and engineering. At this summer school, health science professionals dive into machine learning and data science, while data scientists and engineers gain insight into the fundamentals of biomedical and health sciences.

Engaging the next generation of leaders at Bumblekite was a worthy commitment of time. Young professionals and students – this next generation that will shape the future of healthcare – came together to exchange ideas, collaborate, and celebrate the intersection of biomedicine, healthcare, and AI. It was one of those events where – though you’re expected to inspire others – you find yourself inspired by the ambition, knowledge, and creativity of these talented individuals.

It is in places like this where the real magic happens.

Shez Partovi, EVP / Chief Innovation & Strategy Officer, Philips; Chief Business Leader, Enterprise Informatics, Philips

It was really the best experience an employer has ever given me.

After being surrounded by elite industry leaders, top scholars and brilliant graduate students it’s hard to put into words how great the experience was.

Thank you all for taking the time to make me feel so special, appreciated and valued.

Oswaldo Gomez, participant

…details matter. It's obvious but when executed properly you can clearly see the results… the scene was set to nudge a tone of curiosity, thoughtfulness, playfulness and kindness.
It was energising to be in an environment where kindness, curiosity and intellectual humility reigned and I look forward to be in and help create many more such spaces.

Bernardo Pereira, participant

Words cannot express the wisdom, curiosity, thought-provoking ideas, motivation, and friendships I have experienced and created throughout this intense week.

Oscar Manuel Jiménez Rama, participant

Little did I know, this experience would exceed my highest expectations.

Isotta Trescato, participant

“I've managed to interact with at least 30 very passionate people from different countries around the world working in my field and engage with them professionally. We intend to support each other throughout our career.”

“I also feel motivated to go back to my work and GET IT DONE :)”

“The summer school has quite literally broadened my horizons and I've returned home with a renewed passion for my work and plenty of new ideas to try…”

“Over the course of the Bumblekite week, my professional network has grown significantly. I had an excellent experience and found the quality of the people I met to be outstanding.”

“One of the most insightful weeks of my life. I would love to go back in time and experience it for the first time again.”

“This experience has been profoundly eye-opening, filling me with new knowledge and motivation from meeting so many inspiring individuals!”

“The knowledge and connections I've made here were priceless…”

“I appreciated the thoroughness of the questions and the evident care with which our opinions were considered. From my perspective, it seemed that every response we gave, whether in the application form, our expectations, or during the daily reflections, was carefully read and considered.”

“The Bumblekite week has massively increased my motivation to learn more about machine learning and apply it to the healthcare field.”

“It was one of the best organised events I attended…”

“…one of the best experiences of my PhD career: a fantastic week in Zurich!”

Our programme consists of 60% engineering and 25% leadership sessions with 15% dedicated to structured, social interactions.

You can find our preliminary schedule here.

While we continue crafting this year’s schedule, we invite you to have a look at our 2024 schedule in detail. You can read more about the most recent evolution of our schedule and our plans for this year in our lessons learned 2025 and 2024.

Our Bumblekite machine learning programme is carefully designed to cover in depth pressing topics in machine learning, biosciences, health and care while prioritising practical applications of computing in preventative health, care, biomedical research and direct patient care.

Our goal is for you to be challenged, while receiving the personalised attention and support necessary to succeed in your greatest professional aspirations.  

Every dataset analysed, problem solved and a policy written - every session created and delivered is done through the lens of how that particular action helps a human, in health and as a patient, achieve their goals. Human stories are at the heart of our programme, creating a storyline through which we will journey together in our seven days in Zürich.

A single day at Bumblekite represents a data layer of a health and care system that touches a human life. We will start with a layer of data familiar to many: clinical measurements that come from a visit to the hospital, emergency room, intensive care unit, a blood withdrawal, and move onto imaging, sensors, sequencing, multimodal and health and care systems data.

The core element of our Bumblekite story is the conversation between you, our lecturers and other participants. As one of the most beautiful testaments to it, during our summer school week of 2023, our participants asked over 300 questions.

What are yours? 

A typical Bumblekite day includes the following session types:

Engineering keynote lectures: leaders in the field provide an overview of their area(s) of expertise.

Tutorials: excellence in practice: guided exposure to relevant data sets followed by practical assignments, with a range of difficulty levels designed to ensure a learning outcome and challenges for everyone, irrespective of your initial familiarity with the topic.

Leadership workshops: skills-building sessions designed to foster key leadership communication skills coupled with the near-real time feedback discussions with our lecturers.

Interested in joining us for Bumblekite 2025?

Before heading towards the application form, consider reading our application guidance, co-written with the winner of our Bumblekite ‘24 best application award, Qi Zhang.

When writing our website, we hold ourselves to this standard: can we encourage you - especially if you are unsure whether your skill set or past experience is enough - to reach out and ask? If you are interested in joining the programme but feeling a bit insecure, please don't hesitate to email us with your thoughts. We would love to hear from you!

We are delighted to continue our deeply valued partnerships with Oldtown Hostel Otter and Hotel Placid. We have jointly prepared a set of reduced rates by which their accommodation options will be available to you.
Details about the arrangements can be found in our FAQ section.

changelog

Curious reader, here is where you can find information on when to expect Bumblekite 2025 updates. After opening the applications at the end of January 2025, we will be updating the website in a periodic fashion, with the period becoming shorter as we approach the summer school.
We introduced the changelog feature a few summers ago, and found it to be a fantastic way to nurture dialogue and build trust with you, as well as our broader website audience. As we meticulously build the programme we can't wait to show you, we leave you with one of the tracks that accompanies our building process.