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.
AIxBio projects on biological data, biological AI models, and their interactions with GPAIs, to directly progress the maturity of interventions and reduce strategic/technical uncertainties. Some projects may be scoped to directly inform Sentinel's AIxBio strategy and resource allocation.
We study when and how AI systems can prove that their outputs are correct, bringing the tools of probabilistic proof systems and complexity theory to bear on AI safety. Our contributions are primarily theoretical, in the form of new definitions, constructions, and techniques, but the work is empirically guided: we run experiments on frontier models and on tiny "fruit-fly" models to test intuitions, and papers often pair a theorem with an experiment.
The stream will focus on conceptual, empirical, and theoretical work on scalable oversight and control. This includes but is not limited to creating model organisms for specific failure modes, designing training procedures against them, and making progress on subproblems involved in safety cases.
I work on the science of evaluating advanced AI systems for biological and CBRN risks, with a particular interest in translating technical evidence into decisions by governments and frontier AI developers. In this stream, I’m interested in developing novel capability evaluations, studying how dangerous or dual-use capabilities diffuse into increasingly accessible models, and building scalable red-teaming methods that produce rigorous, decision-relevant evidence without requiring risky real-world demonstrations.
This stream will focus on technical AI governance research -- hence the name TAIGR. We will follow an academic collaboration model and produce open research on applied AI safeguards, incidents, laws, and other impactful topics in AI governance.
In the shard theory stream, we create qualitatively new methods and fields of inquiry, from steering vectors to gradient routing to unsupervised capability elicitation to robust unlearning. If you're theory-minded, maybe you'll help us formalize shard theory itself.
We are interested in AI control and scalable oversight. I'm excited to work with scholars interested in empirical projects building and evaluating control measures and oversight techniques for LLM agents, especially those based on chain of thought monitoring. I'm also interested in the science of chain of thought monitorability, misalignment and control. An ideal project ends with a paper submitted to NeurIPS/ICML/ICLR.
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.