Meet the Team
Christian Smith – Co-Director
Christian is Co-Director of MATS and Co-Founder of the London Initiative for Safe AI (LISA). Previously, he studied particle physics and pedagogy at Stanford University, worked in operations at multiple organizations, performed research at CERN, and organized educational programs like the Uncommon Sense Seminar.
Ryan Kidd – Co-Director
Ryan is Co-Director of MATS, a Co-Founder and Board Member of the London Initiative for Safe AI (LISA), a Manifund Regrantor, and advisor to AI Safety ANZ and Catalyze Impact. Previously, he completed a PhD in Physics at the University of Queensland (UQ), where he ran UQ’s Effective Altruism student group for three years, tutored physics courses, and volunteered in academic, mental health, and ally roles.
Team Leads
Laura Vaughan
Research Management Lead
Laura leads the Research Management Team at MATS, where she coordinates various program elements in Berkeley, coaches scholars to optimize program outcomes, and collaborates with Henry to support scholars and shape the London extension. A Thiel Fellow alum from 2017, Laura studied physics at the University of Waterloo and brings experience in ML model dataset creation and training, entrepreneurship, full-stack software engineering, and biomedical research.
Jana Guraziu
Community Management Lead
Jana is the Community Management Lead at MATS, where she is a resource to the scholars for anything pertaining to their well-being. She works to build a safe, supportive, and nurturing environment where scholars can flourish as individuals and create friendships and connections. Jana studied biology at Harvard and biostatistics at UNC with experience in entrepreneurship and data analytics.
Sade McDougal
Operations Lead
Sade leads the Operations team at MATS, where she helps the program run smoothly by organizing events and supporting scholars, mentors, and team members. Prior to MATS, she spent several years on the Development team at GiveWell. Sade studied Communication at Cornell University and holds an M.J. from UC Berkeley.
Research Management
Juan Gil
Research Manager
Juan is a Research Manager at MATS where he coaches scholars and has led applicant selection and internal impact evaluations. Prior to MATS, Juan worked as a professional community builder for the Boston AI safety and Effective Altruism communities. He holds a B.S. in Mathematics with Computer Science from MIT (2020).
Daniel Filan
Research Manager
Daniel is a research manager at MATS, where he works with scholars to help them get as much as they can out of the program. Just prior to joining MATS, he graduated with a PhD in Computer Science from UC Berkeley. On the side, he makes the AI X-risk Research Podcast.
John Teichman
Research Manager
John is a seasoned program and product manager with decades of experience working on technology projects at Intel and Microsoft. In 2023, seeing that AI capability was growing at an alarming rate, John determined to make a career transition to AI safety, first by working as an affiliate for Stanford AI Alignment (SAIA), and then by participating in CAIS' AI Safety, Ethics and Society, and Blue Dot Impact's AI Fundamentals AI Safety courses. John aims to apply his skills and experience to advance field building in AI safety and alignment as a Research Manager at MATS. He possesses a BA in Economics from WCU and an MBA with a concentration in international finance from the Shidler School of Business at the University of Hawaii.
Iftekhar Uddin
Research Manager
Iftekhar is a Research Manager at MATS, where he helps scholars navigate bottlenecks, develop grant proposals, and advance their research goals. A physician by training, he spent four years at Johns Hopkins conducting cardiology research focused on heart disease epidemiology and statistics (H-index: 23).
Prior to joining MATS, Iftekhar worked on vision-language models and as a robotics engineer specializing in industrial cobots. Committed to advancing AI safety, his interests span diverse research directions, including evaluations, oversight, and other approaches to ensure the responsible development of AI systems.
Shujaat Mirza
Research Manager
Shujaat is a Research Manager at MATS, where he supports scholars in shaping their research agendas, drafting funding proposals, and achieving program outcomes. He is a Senior Member of IEEE and holds a PhD in Computer Science from NYU, bringing a decade of experience across cybersecurity, privacy technologies, and AI safety.
Avery Griffin
Research Manager
Avery is a Research Manager at MATS. He has worked on a variety of AI safety research agendas since 2022. Most recently, he worked on evaluation methods for measuring and influencing agentic properties in LLMs at the Center on Long-Term Risk. Before that, he co-started and developed the mechanistic interpretability agenda with Apollo Research, leading most of the early engineering work. Before all of that, he worked on modularity in neural networks under the mentorship of John Wentworth. Before AI safety, Avery worked as an ML engineer in industry and studied mathematics in university.
Bryce Woodworth
Research Manager
Bryce is a Research Manager at MATS where he works to empower scholars and mentors to achieve better program outcomes. He particularly emphasizes strategic clarity and the building of foundational habits and skills. Prior to MATS, Bryce was a Software Engineer and a productivity coach, and has started EA and AI Safety groups in San Diego and Mountain View. He holds an M.S. in Computer Science and Engineering from UC San Diego.
London Team
London Team
Matthew Wearden
Research Manager London
Prior to MATS, Matthew has produced AI governance research and attended ARENA. He has been a part of the AI safety community for close to 6 years. Matthew worked in a project management capacity at Jane Street for almost 3 years on operations and corporate governance teams. He holds an undergraduate degree in Mathematics from Cambridge (2020). Matthew co-leads the extension programme with Henry, working on strategy and processes. As part of this, he research manages scholars on multiple streams.
Henry Sleight
Research Manager / London Program Coordinator
Prior to MATS, Henry co-founded the Global Challenges Project, and worked at EA Oxford as Executive Director, where he did EA and x-risk community building for top university students. He holds an undergraduate degree in Classics from Oxford (2021). Henry coordinates and leads on design for the extension programs. On the side, he has managed Ethan Perez's independent research fellows in adversarial robustness, model organisms, and model self-prediction. Henry is also Chair of the advisory board of LISA.
Henning Bartsch
Research Manager London
Henning is a Research Manager at MATS London where he focuses on technical guidance and professional coaching to optimize scholars’ goals. Prior to MATS, he worked as an ML engineer for 3 years while publishing technical AI safety research and maintaining a coaching practice on personal development since 2017. He combines his technical and coaching experience to empower scholars’ research and professional growth.
Operations
Kali Richards
Operations Generalist
Kali is an Operations Generalist at MATS, where she closely interfaces with scholars, responds to emergent housing needs, and provides operational support. She holds a BA in political science from Columbia University, where she was president of Columbia EA and facilitated AI Governance fellowships for the Columbia AI Alignment Club.
Kristina Vaia
Operations Generalist
Kristina is an Operations Generalist at MATS. She built operational expertise in arts management and completed her Master's in Public Policy and Management from Carnegie Mellon University. She then conducted AI policy and safety research at two AI research labs. Her commitment to AI safety comes from a deep conviction that developing aligned AI systems is the most important challenge facing humanity, and that developing research talent is the biggest bottleneck to achieving this goal.
Vivian Ha
Operations Generalist
Vivian is an Operations Generalist at MATS where she provides operational support for scholars and events. Prior to MATS, she worked at Google within staffing operations and is involved in South Bay grassroots organizing. She holds a BS in Public Health from San Jose State University.
Raj Thimmiah
Operations Generalist
Raj is an Operations Generalist at MATS. He has extensive operations experience from contracting for effective altruist organizations in the Bay. His roles ranged from furnishing from scratch a 40 bedroom dormitory to doing logistics for summits and research training camps. Prior to moving to the bay, he studied at Waseda University in Japan.