MATS Winter 2027
The Winter 2027 program will run for 12 weeks, from January 19th to April 10th, in Berkeley, CA and London, UK, with remote options also available. Fellows will receive mentorship from world-class researchers at organizations like Anthropic, Google DeepMind, OpenAI, Redwood Research, and ARC, with the option to apply for a 6–12 month funded extension beyond the main program.
Applications are now closed.
Program phases
Key dates for the application and admissions timeline
Applications typically open several months before the program begins. Applicants complete a multi-stage admissions process, beginning with a general application. Depending on the tracks, streams, and mentors they apply to, applicants may also complete additional evaluations such as interviews, work tests, coding assessments, or writing samples before final admissions decisions are made. More information can be found on the apply page.
In Stage 1, applicants apply to one or more tracks (broad research areas): Empirical, Theory, Strategy & Forecasting, Policy & Governance, System Security, Biosecurity, and Founding & Field-Building. In Stage 2, advancing applicants choose specific streams within those tracks, each led by one or more mentors with their own research agenda. You can view this list below or as a grid here.
Existing frameworks for understanding intelligent agency don't do a great job at describing multi-agent dynamics (e.g. agents recursively modeling each other, merging with each other, threatening each other, etc). Most work in my stream aims (implicitly or explicitly) to move towards a multi-agent understanding of intelligence.
Roger Grosse’s stream investigates how to improve influence functions and other training data attribution methods, and uses these tools to study alignment-related phenomena such as out-of-context reasoning and emergent misalignment. The ideal scholar has experience with LLM internals, strong statistics/applied math skills (especially numerical linear algebra), and can independently drive research from literature review through experimentation and analysis. Roger provides shovel-ready projects while giving exceptional scholars freedom to pursue their own ideas, and is open to scholars collaborating with others.
Eleos AI Research is a nonprofit working to ensure the interests of AI systems are appropriately taken into account as we navigate transformative AI. We are looking for competent generalists to help scale up our AI welfare field-building by running high-impact events, or to otherwise amplify our research, communications, and operational capacity.
Backing projects focused on product development and organization building in the areas of AI safety and alignment, biosecurity, and critical cybersecurity. Looking for fellows who are self starters, default to action, and have a desire to create.
We work to advance technically grounded international coordination to reduce catastrophic risks from frontier AI, with a particular focus on China and US. We translate technical AI safety and governance tools into practical proposals for coordination.
I work on mitigating risks from scheming or compromised AI agents deployed for high-stakes national security tasks.
Therapeutics may have durable advantages over pathogens even in the limit of technological progress. How can therapeutic development and manufacturing be made resilient under biorisk scenarios? How can AI progress be maximally leveraged for defense?
This stream will work on projects that empirically assess national security threats of AI misuse (CBRN terrorism and cyberattacks) and improve dangerous capability evaluations. Threat modeling applicants should have a skeptical mindset, enjoy case study work, and be strong written communicators. Eval applicants should be able and excited to help demonstrate concepts like sandbagging elicitation gaps in an AI misuse context.
The MATS Program is supported by a diverse and highly respected group of mentors — top-tier researchers, engineers, and thinkers working across AI alignment, governance, interpretability, and security.
Application
What are the key dates for MATS Winter 2027?
The timeline for the MATS Winter 2027 program is:
- Application final deadline: September 6th, 2026
- Evaluations: September, October and early November
- Offers sent: Early to mid-November
- Program dates: January 19th to April 10th. The Winter 2027 Program has a time commitment of 40 hours per week over 12 weeks and takes place in-person in Berkeley, CA and London, UK. Remote or part-time participation is a possibility depending on your circumstances and mentor.
- Extension phase: Possible 6 or 12-month extension for select fellows after the 12-week program, starting in December.
What if I am accepted by multiple streams?
Based on stream rankings of applicants and applicant rankings of streams, a final matching process uses both sides' rankings to send out a single offer.
How long does the application process take?
Stage 1 applications open on August 18th and close on September 6th, end of day anywhere on Earth. Offers go out in early to mid-November, and the program starts on January 19th.
Finances
What does “financial support” concretely entail?
MATS provides a stipend of $1600 per week for participation in the main program ($19,200 for the full 12-week program). Scholars who are participating and performing research for less than 40 hours/week and/or for less than 12 weeks will receive stipends proportional to their level of participation.
Separately from this stipend, MATS will provide scholars with travel to and from Berkeley or London, housing, office space, and lunch and dinner on weekdays.
Do I have to pay taxes on the grant I receive for the MATS Program?
MATS participants may have to pay taxes on their grants based on the rules of the countries in which they are a resident for tax purposes. The grants should be regarded as private grants from a non-profit entity provided to individuals for the purpose of independent research and participation in a US-based educational seminar program.