Meet the MATS team

Laura leads the Research team at MATS. Having joined at the end of 2022, she holds responsibility for ensuring high-impact scholar outcomes and distribution of research resources. The mission of her team is to accelerate the research impact of the program through facilitation of all parts of the research process, including ideation/exploration, research operations, and collaboration.

​

A Thiel Fellow alum from 2017, Laura studied physics at the University of Waterloo and co-founded a successful stem cell cryogenics startup before pivoting into research, consultation, and software engineering. She brings experience in ML model dataset creation and training, management, entrepreneurship, full-stack software engineering, and biomedical research.

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.

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.

Zohreh is a research manager at MATS London. She is also an affiliated lecturer in the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on interpretability and its applications for knowledge discovery. Previously, she was the CSO at Leap Laboratories, a spin out of MATS, where she led research. She brings experience from both academia and industry. She is excited to help scholars make the most out of their AI safety research ranging from high impact publications to entrepreneurship.

Jeffrey is a Research Manager at MATS. He has worked on AI policy research, focusing on the historical development of other technologies, and how society reacted to them, in order to better understand and shape potential AI policies. Before this, Jeffrey was working towards fusion power. He has a background in physics, particularly plasma physics, turbulence, and chaos theory.

Jason is a research manager at MATS, where he helps scholars pursue research that suits their skills and interests. He particularly enjoys helping scholars improve the impact of their policy and governance research. Before joining MATS, Jason led the Center for AI Policy (CAIP), which lobbied Congress to pass strong AI safety legislation. He has also worked as a legal compliance counselor and as a product safety litigator, giving him a firsthand view of how laws are (and are not) applied in everyday situations. Jason holds a JD from Harvard Law and a BA in Political Science from Yale University.

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.

Keivan is a Senior 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.

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.

Rich is a research manager in London and a former MATS scholar. He completed his Master's in Mathematical and Theoretical Physics at Oxford (2013-17), focusing on plasma physics and nuclear fusion. He found AI safety through 80,000 Hours four months into his Physics PhD at Imperial, which motivated him to leave the PhD in early 2018 to upskill as a software engineer instead. With strong engineering skills, he began transitioning into AI safety by completing AISF in 2024 and ML4Good in 2025, and worked with Marius Hobbhahn on black-box monitoring in MATS 8.0 and 8.1. He has also taught at ML4Good.

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.

Patryk Wielopolski is a Research Manager at MATS London, where he supports scholars' technical and professional development. Prior to MATS, he spent 6 years at DataWalk building their AI research agenda, leading a team of research engineers, and architecting AI solutions for Fortune 500 companies and government agencies. He holds a Ph.D. in AI with publications in AAAI, TPAMI, and ECAI, focusing on probabilistic models. He also co-organizes AI Safety Poland community.

Cory is a Research Manager at MATS, where she helps scholars and mentors do great research, and become better researchers. She brings 15 years of experience in industry. Most recently she spent a decade at Uber building and leading science and research teams, in the areas of policy research, algorithmic fairness, and marketing measurement. Before that, she worked as a data scientist at Beats Music and Google. Cory holds a BA in Cognitive Science from Dartmouth College.

Chris is a Research Manager at MATS. Prior to joining MATS, he worked for Google as a Quantitative UX Researcher for 12 years and earned a PhD in Neuroscience from Johns Hopkins and an MS in CS from the University of Southern California. He's been in the AI safety space since early 2024, conducting independent AI safety research and serving as a teaching fellow for Bluedot courses, a SPAR mentor, and a research manager.

Skylar is a research manager at MATS. Prior to joining MATS he worked for 7 years as a data analyst for the Seattle Mariners, particularly focusing on in-game strategy and staff education. He transitioned careers in 2025 after participating in AI Safety courses from BlueDot Impact and AI Safety Camp. He holds a B.A. in statistics from Yale University. Outside of work Skylar loves playing all sports, including most recently golf, pickleball, and bowling.

Fred is a research manager at MATS in London, providing technical guidance and coaching to help MATS fellows do great research and get the most out of the program. Prior to MATS he worked as a ML research engineer in the music and music technology industries and completed a PhD working on AI-assisted music creation at Queen Mary University in London. He's excited to apply his expertise in applied machine learning research and research management in industry to support fellows advance research in AI safety.

Jinghua is a Research Manager at MATS. She completed her PhD at the University of Hong Kong and later continued her research training at the University of Chicago, working at the intersection of neuroscience, linguistics, and speech perception. Before joining MATS, she worked at a nonprofit research funder, where she led a portfolio of AI applications in clinical and health research—an experience that deepened her interest in responsible AI deployment and governance. Conceptually, she sees strong parallels between mechanistic interpretability and the questions of neural representation she explored in research. Together, these experiences motivate her commitment to AI safety.

Fred 是 MATS 伦敦团队的研究经理，期待在短期研究项目和长期职业发展方面为研究员提供支持。在十年的精算职业生涯中，他建立了统计风险框架，向工作繁忙的高管清晰传达技术分析，并扩展保险定价团队，每月量化数十亿英镑的负债。Fred 于 2010 至 2014 年在牛津大学学习材料科学，并研究了提升硅晶圆质量的技术。

Srija is a Research Manager at MATS. She received her PhD from Arizona State University focusing on machine learning for satellite data. She then worked at NASA Goddard as a postdoc on ML for earth science and later as a research scientist (AI/ML PI) at USRA/NASA, contributing to NASA’s AI-driven science, fine-tuning and red-teaming efforts. More recently, she has been interested in the broader impact of AI and in assessing vulnerabilities in the AI lifecycle to improve AI safety and governance. At MATS she contributes to that by supporting AI safety research scholars and mentors.

Nayara is a Research Manager at MATS London. She is excited to work with fellows in developing ambitious research in AI alignment and security and helping that work achieve broader impact. Her interests combine theoretical and empirical approaches to AI, from modelling new phenomena in learning to exploring debate-based AI systems for scientific reasoning. She holds a PhD in Theoretical Physics and has worked at the intersection of Particle Physics and Cosmology, building models to explain phenomena from small to large scales in the universe. She has an international and interdisciplinary background, with experience in the UK, US, Germany, Italy, and Brazil, and has held positions in both academia and industry, including at IBM Research, MIT, Oxford, ICTP Trieste, and DESY Hamburg.

Tasos is a Research Manager at MATS, where he focuses on shaping research questions, designing studies, and producing rigorous empirical outputs. Prior to MATS, he worked as a postdoctoral research fellow in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), studying the societal impacts of digital technologies and often conducting empirical studies with human participants. Tasos holds a PhD in HCI, an MSc in Advanced Information Systems, a BSc in Computer Science, and is an amateur improv actor.

Ning 是 MATS 的研究经理，负责支持学者的技术研究与职业发展。此前，她曾在波士顿咨询公司任职，带领数据科学团队，构建并扩展用于支持 CFO 决策的机器学习产品，并参与公司的负责任 AI 实践。她拥有南加州大学电气工程硕士学位，以及苏黎世联邦理工学院纳米技术博士学位。

Nate is a research manager at MATS. He earned his PhD at Tufts University specializing in the cognitive neuroscience of language, emotion, and schizophrenia. Before MATS, Nate worked as a data scientist in startups focused on rare genetic epilepsies, Fragile X syndrome, and preeclampsia prevention, driving research programs. He came to AI Safety from the technical side and is a successif alum.

Eleni is a Research Manager at MATS, where she helps advance technical AI alignment and governance. Previously, she was a Winter Fellow at GovAI specializing in policy for differential technological development and automated AI R&D. She has led, supervised, and contributed to projects across the AI safety space. Her PhD research applies conceptual tools, such as Dennett’s intentional stance and Marr’s three levels, to model safety-relevant properties of LLM cognition and behavior. She holds degrees in history of science and philosophy.

Katie is a Research Manager at MATS. Previously, she taught undergraduates and managed teams of teaching assistants at Yale and Boston University. At BU, she helped overhaul the distributed systems course and conducted research in the Complex Analytics & Scalable Processing Lab. She has also worked as a software engineer in an early-stage prediction market startup. Her interest in AI safety developed during graduate school, which led her to BlueDot Impact coursework. She holds an MS from Yale and a BA from BU, both in CS. Outside of work, Katie can be found pestering her kitten Calvin (an agentically misaligned, eval-aware safety nightmare) and her puppy Annie, or working her way through the US National Parks.

Robyn is a Research Manager at MATS, where she supports scholars and mentors as they tackle hard problems in AI safety. Before joining MATS, Robyn worked at The MITRE Corporation, where she designed and executed novel AI evaluations for large government-funded research programs and conducted NLP research, including work on identity and entity matching. She has long been interested in questions of trust and transparency in AI, and came to the AI Safety field through BlueDot Impact's Technical AI Safety course. Robyn holds a bachelor's in Computer Science and Pure Math from the University of Waterloo and a master's from MIT, jointly supervised by the AI Lab and Media Lab. Fun fact: Robyn and her husband and three children spent seven years living off-grid in a log cabin in Vermont, where they made their own maple syrup.

Prior to MATS, Thomas has managed conservation programs across South Africa, scaled environmental programs in New Zealand and has helped social-sector organizations determine the impact they have on the communities they serve. He holds a PhD in marine science from The University of Auckland. After reading the “AI 2027 Scenario” and relocating to the Bay Area, Thomas transitioned into AI Safety to use his skills and experience to further the goals of the AI Safety community.

Heera is a Research Manager at MATS. She holds a PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences (conc. Neuroscience) from the University of Florida and a Master's in Nonprofit Administration and Leadership from Cleveland State University. She previously founded and led Go Laadli, a social impact organization working with young women in India where she designed mentorship, leadership, and educational programs. Her pivot into AI safety - shaped by formal training in AI safety, ethics, and biosecurity, and a Project Research Manager role at AI Safety Camp - reflects a long-standing, intellectually serious engagement with problems that have real human stakes. Her interests span technical research, AI × biosecurity, governance, and field-building, and she is committed to directing her work where it can have the greatest impact.

Tali is a Research Manager at MATS, specializing in AI governance. Before joining MATS, she spent four years at the U.S. Department of State, where she helped draft the Department’s first ethical AI policy and served as the director of innovation in the Office of the Secretary. She’s pursuing a PhD in Information Science at the University of California, Berkeley, focusing on AI alignment and trust in democratic institutions. She received her BA from Northwestern University and her MSc from the London School of Economics.

Jeremy is a Research Manager at MATS. He spent over decade in the cybersecurity training and workforce development space in technical, pedagogical and leadership roles.  His interests include the impact of AI on offense–defense asymmetries, red-teaming LLMs and AI-enabled infrastructure, the empirical evaluation of autonomous systems, and translating AI security and safety research into practical implications for decision makers.

Dhairya 是 MATS 的研究经理，负责支持推进 AI 安全与对齐研究的学者和导师。在加入 MATS 之前，他曾在早期初创公司、企业、学术机构和非营利组织担任高级研究、应用 AI 工程和技术项目管理职务。最近，他在 Causely 研究复杂系统中的智能体因果推断与发现，并曾在艾伦人工智能研究所和艾伦脑科学研究所担任技术项目经理。Dhairya 共同创立了社会影响力非营利组织 City Awake，并曾在波士顿科学博物馆以及罗马尼亚和平行动培训与研究所担任顾问。他在戈尔韦大学获得计算机科学博士学位，研究重点是提升大语言模型的基础因果推理能力和因果知识表示。他还拥有哈佛大学计算机科学硕士学位，期间研究对话系统的强化学习；并拥有罗切斯特大学学士学位，主修英语和社会政治思想跨学科研究。

Maureen 是 MATS 的高级研究经理，专注于 AI 政策与治理的影响。她曾任美国外交官，在美国国务院工作十年，任职期间曾在亚洲、非洲和欧洲工作，并管理专注于美中关系、制裁合规、全球卫生安全和人权事务的国际团队。在国务院任职前，她曾在联合国和多个国际非政府组织工作，并曾在军控谈判学院开展核安全研究，也曾在子午线国际中心 Tech Labs 从事 AI 政策培训。Maureen 目前是外交关系委员会的任期会员，也是 Semafor World Economy 的负责人。她拥有纽约大学公共管理硕士学位，以及纽约州立大学石溪分校政治学学士学位。