Meet the Team
Christian Smith – Co-Executive Director
Christian is Co-Executive 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-Executive Director
Ryan is Co-Executive 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, Catalyze Impact, and Pivotal Research. Previously, he completed a PhD in Physics at the University of Queensland (UQ) and conducted independent research in AI alignment for the Stanford Existential Risks Initiative.
Leadership Team
Laura Vaughan
Research Director
Laura leads the Research Management Team at MATS, where she coordinates various program elements in Berkeley, and leads a team whose mission is to accelerate the research impact of the program. A Thiel Fellow alum from 2017, Laura studied physics at the University of Waterloo and brings experience in ML model dataset creation and training, management, entrepreneurship, full-stack software engineering, and biomedical research.
Matthew Wearden
London Director
Matthew runs the London team of MATS, which owns coordinating and planning the extension phase of the programme.
Matthew has been part of the AI safety community for close to 7 years. Prior to MATS, he independently produced AI governance research, focusing on his specialisation of corporate governance. Before that, he worked in a project management capacity at Jane Street for nearly 3 years.
As part of his research management work at MATS, Matthew has also made contributions to a wide range of research, with a focus on mechanistic interpretability and governance. He holds an undergraduate degree in Mathematics from Cambridge (2020).
Jim Chapman
Operations Director
Jim Chapman leads the MATS Operations Team, which builds and maintains the organizational infrastructure that enables MATS to effectively support the needs of its AI researchers. He brings extensive senior management and operations leadership experience from roles in the nonprofit, academia, and consulting sectors. Jim’s interest in AI, rationality, and effective altruism began through conversations with his son—a curiosity that deepened into concern and ultimately a personal commitment to ensuring AI benefits humanity. Joining MATS is his way of putting that commitment into action.
Jana Guraziu
Community Lead
Jana is the Community 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.
Juan Gil
Program Lead & Senior Research Manager
Juan is the Program Lead 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).
Research Team
Daniel Filan
Senior 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.
Bryce Woodworth
Senior 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.
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.
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.
Sanyu Rajakumar
Research Manager
Sanyu has conducted technical research in AI safety and biosecurity, focusing on evaluations and threat modeling of large language models and biological design tools. He also co-founded and led his university's AI safety group. He holds a degree in computational biology from Brown University.
Lawrence Wagner
Research Manager
Lawrence Wagner is a cybersecurity and governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) professional with experience supporting AI policy research, compliance readiness, and AI governance evaluations. He founded Spark Mindset Inc., where he focused on workforce development and cybersecurity training for underrepresented communities. Since then, Lawrence has contributed to risk assessments, AI policy scoring tools, and compliance reviews that align with global AI frameworks. He recently finished his Master’s in Information and Cybersecurity and a Graduate Certificate in Applied Data Science from the University of California, Berkeley.
Jonathan Michala
Research Manager
Jonathan is a research manager at MATS, where he offers support for strong research outputs and scholar outcomes. Previously, he earned his PhD in mathematics from the University of Southern California. His motivation for AI Safety originates from his time at Duke’s Effective Altruism Club, while more recently, he’s participated in the AISF alignment course, SPAR, and USC’s AI Safety Club.
Abigail Yohannes
Research Manager
Abigail is a Research Manager at MATS, where she is dedicated to supporting impactful alignment research and helping scholars make the most of their experience in the program. Prior to joining MATS, she worked as a threat data analyst at an AI startup leveraging artificial intelligence and computer vision to automate physical security systems. She is particularly interested in the societal implications of AI, and has completed BlueDot Impact’s AI Safety Fundamentals course to deepen her understanding in this area. She holds a Masters in Data Science and Engineering from North Carolina A&T State University and a Bachelors in Political Science from UCLA.
Claire Short
Research Manager
Claire has taken part in multiple research and artist residencies, academic research in neuroscience, work in data science, research project work in MATS 3.0 and 7.0, and time as a research lead in AI Safety Camp. She is also the founder of Athena, a mentorship program for women in AI safety research. She holds a Masters in Cognitive Science from Columbia University.
Maria Kostylew
Research Manager
Maria is a research manager, specialising in AI governance. She’s pursuing a PhD in political science at the University of Oxford. Before joining MATS, she has worked at the Centre for European Policy Studies, with a focus on EU AI policy and deliberative democracy. She has previously co-organised a number of technical alignment programs and retreats, including an iteration of MLAB at Oxford and the Schelling residency.
Elise Racine
Research Manager
Elise brings dual expertise in AI safety/governance and biosecurity, having conducted in-depth research across both fields. A Clarendon Scholar and PhD candidate at Oxford University’s Institute for Ethics in AI, she was previously a Teaching Fellow with BlueDot Impact and has advised decision-makers (e.g., the UN, US agencies, startups) on AI risks, policy, adoption, and oversight. Her career spans multiple sectors, including founder and think tank experience. Elise holds an Executive MPA from the Hertie School, an MSc from the London School of Economics, and a BA from Stanford University.
Community Team
Nate Simmons
Community Manager
Nate is a Community Manager at MATS, where he works to strengthen community connection and support scholar well-being. With a background in startups and people operations, he brings a passion for building communities where people feel valued, understood, and empowered to do their best work. Nate studied government at Harvard and holds a BA in Business Administration from Morehouse College.
John Teichman
Community Programs Officer
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.
London Team
Henning Bartsch
Research Manager
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.
Keivan Navaie
Research Manager
Keivan is a Research Manager at MATS London, where he provides technical guidance, AI safety mentoring, and professional development support to help scholars advance their research and career goals. He is also a Professor of AI at Lancaster University and serves as a Scientific Advisor at The Alan Turing Institute. Before joining MATS, he held senior advisory roles, including Principal Technology Advisor at the UK Information Commissioner’s Office. Keivan’s work spans AI safety, accountability, and compliance in high-stakes applications, and he combines his academic and policy expertise with a commitment to fostering responsible innovation and scholar development within the MATS community.
Cameron Holmes
Senior Research Manager
Cameron is a Research Manager at MATS, where he works to support scholar’s research during the extension phase at LISA and build out MATS infrastructure. Prior to joining MATS he worked as a Product Manager for 10 years, primarily building platforms and operational processes for capital markets analytics. Following an increased involvement in EA and seeing concerning predictions for AI bear out he began a career transition to AI Safety in 2023. Cameron holds a master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering from Bristol.
Perusha Moodley
Research Manager
Perusha is a research manager at MATS London, where she provides technical guidance to scholars across multiple alignment research areas. She holds a PhD in Deep Reinforcement Learning, which sparked her interest in mechanistic interpretation. She subsequently specialized in AI Safety through the AISF alignment course, AISC, and various hackathons and deep dives. Perusha has a BSc and MSc in Mechanical Engineering and 18 years of experience as a senior software developer.
Dennis Akar
Research Manager
Dennis is a Research Manager at MATS, where he builds research infrastructure and provides technical guidance to scholars across multiple alignment research areas. Since 2022 he has also worked as a research scientist focused on LLM interpretability, a teaching assistant for ARENA (Alignment Research Engineer Accelerator), and a two-time MATS scholar, publishing work in interpretability. Earlier, Dennis worked as an ML Engineer applying deep learning to cancer research. He has been engaged with AI-safety questions since 2014 and holds an MPhil in Advanced Computer Science (with distinction) from the University of Cambridge.
Sofia Surla
Operations Generalist
Sofia manages Operations at MATS in London, supporting the team and scholars with day-to-day office management, process set-up, and future planning. She previously worked as a program manager in legal and sales operations and has been on the path to AI safety since she read The Alignment Problem in 2022. She is currently pursuing an MSc in Cognition and Computation.
Operations Team
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.
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.
Board of Directors
Abi Olvera
Board Member
Abi has served as a U.S. diplomat for over seven years, focusing on emerging technology, geopolitical risks, immigration, macroeconomic stability, cybersecurity, AI, and national security with an emphasis on China. Abi earned an BA from University of Richmond and a Master’s of Global Affairs from Yale University.
Michael Aird
Board Member
Michael is a board member at MATS. He is also the Fellowship Coordinator at the RAND Technology and Security Policy Center, an advisor and former cofounder of IAPS, and an affiliate of GovAI. He previously had roles at the University of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute, Rethink Priorities, the Center on Long-Term Risk, and Convergence Analysis.
Josh Jacobson
Board Member
Josh Jacobson is the Chief Operating Officer at the Future of Life Foundation. He has worked across organizational leadership, operations, and/or research for METR, FAR AI, Anthropic, on a research grant, for the Future for Humanity Institute (EpiFor), the Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative, the World Bank, SocialCops, Innovations for Poverty Action, the Centre for Effective Altruism, a tech startup, and PepsiCo. Josh holds an MPA with a focus in Econometrics in International Development from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and a Bachelor’s in International Relations and Government from Dartmouth College.