Winter 2027 applications will open soon
The Winter cohort will connect fellows with mentors from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Redwood Research, ARC, and more on research and field-building efforts to reduce frontier AI risk. MATS provides fellows with support in the form of funding, compute, housing & meals, research management, and a driven community, so fellows can focus fully on doing impactful work.
Applications to the Neel Nanda stream close separately on September 4th and can be found here.
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Program benefits
- $19.2k stipend and $24k compute
- Free housing, with free food
- Travel covered and J1 visa covered if needed
- Learn more on the program page
Neel Nanda’s Winter 2027 Stream
Neel Nanda’s applications open and close significantly sooner than the others due to his unique exploration phase. His applications are due Friday, Sep 4 at 11:59pm PT.
The full Winter 2027 application launch is expected to happen in late August.
Neel leads the mechanistic interpretability team at Google DeepMind, where he tries to understand how models work and why they act the way they do, and figure out how we can use this understanding to make future models, including AGI, safe.
Neel takes a pragmatic approach to interpretability: identify what stands between where we are now and where we want to be by AGI, and then focus on the subset of resulting research problems that can be tractably studied on today's models. This can look like diving deep into the internals of the model, or simpler black box methods like reading and carefully intervening on the chain of thought - whatever is the right tool for the job. This could look like studying how to detect deception, understanding why a model took a seemingly concerning action, or fixing weak points in other areas of safety, e.g. using interpretability to stop models realising they are being tested. You can learn more about Neel's approach in this podcast.
He has significant time mentoring MATS fellows, and has worked with ~70 so far - he’s excited to take on even more!
Neel’s application timeline:
- Friday, Sep 4, 11:59 pm PT: Deadline for Neel's stream application
- ~Tuesday, Sept 15: All exploration phase decisions finalized
- Sept 28 - Oct 30: Online exploration phase
- ~early November: All research phase decisions finalized
- Jan 19 - April 10: In-person Research Phase in Berkeley
Participants in the remote exploration phase will receive $500 in compute and a $4,200 stipend.
MATS general application process
MATS supports researchers and field-builders across seven tracks: Empirical, Theory, Strategy & Forecasting, Policy & Governance, Systems Security, Founding & Field-Building, and Biosecurity. You can apply to one or more of these tracks in the Stage 1 application.
Stage 1: General application (open until September 6th)
The general application asks for:
- Your background
- Short responses (some general, some track specific)
- Contact details for two references (we won't reach out to them until later in the process)
Returning applicants from previous 2026 application rounds can sign in to pre-fill their application.
For more on what we and mentors are looking for, see getting into MATS.
Stage 2: Central evaluations (September)
If you advance past Stage 1, you’ll complete additional evaluations before your application is reviewed by mentors. The process differs by track.
For Empirical, Stage 2 has two phases:
- Empirical assessments: You’ll complete one or two standardized assessments evaluating research taste and technical implementation skills.
- Stream selection: If you advance, you’ll apply to and rank the specific research streams you’d like to join.
For all other tracks, you’ll proceed directly to stream selection.
Each track contains multiple streams, each led by one or more mentors with a shared research agenda. When applying to streams, you’ll answer stream-specific questions. These are usually short responses, though some streams may ask for a longer research proposal.
Stage 3: Mentor review (October to early November)
Mentors review applications to their streams and rank the applicants they’d like to work with. Mentors often invite applicants to complete interviews and work tests during this stage.
A final matching process uses both mentor and applicant rankings to determine offers.
Offers (Early to mid-November)
Final offers are sent in early to mid-November. The program begins January 19, 2027.