Applications to Neel Nanda’s Winter 2027 Stream are Now Open!
The Winter 2027 cohort will connect fellows with mentors from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Redwood Research, ARC, and more on research and field-building efforts to reduce frontier AI risk. MATS provides fellows with support in the form of funding, compute, housing & meals, research management, and a driven community so fellows can focus fully on doing impactful work. Applications for the full cohort will launch in mid-August, while applications for the Neel Nanda stream are open now until September 4.
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Program benefits
- $19.2k stipend and $24k compute
- Free housing, with free food
- Travel covered and J1 visa covered if needed
- Learn more on the program page
Neel Nanda’s Winter 2027 Stream
Neel Nanda’s applications open and close significantly sooner than the others due to his unique exploration phase. His applications are due Friday, Sep 4 at 11:59pm PT.
The full Winter 2027 application launch is expected to happen in late August.
Neel leads the mechanistic interpretability team at Google DeepMind, where he tries to understand how models work and why they act the way they do, and figure out how we can use this understanding to make future models, including AGI, safe.
Neel takes a pragmatic approach to interpretability: identify what stands between where we are now and where we want to be by AGI, and then focus on the subset of resulting research problems that can be tractably studied on today's models. This can look like diving deep into the internals of the model, or simpler black box methods like reading and carefully intervening on the chain of thought - whatever is the right tool for the job. This could look like studying how to detect deception, understanding why a model took a seemingly concerning action, or fixing weak points in other areas of safety, e.g. using interpretability to stop models realising they are being tested. You can learn more about Neel's approach in this podcast.
He has significant time mentoring MATS fellows, and has worked with ~70 so far - he’s excited to take on even more!
Neel’s application timeline:
- Friday, Sep 4, 11:59 pm PT: Deadline for Neel's stream application
- ~Tuesday, Sept 15: All exploration phase decisions finalized
- Sept 28 - Oct 30: Online exploration phase
- ~early November: All research phase decisions finalized
- Jan 19 - April 10: In-person Research Phase in Berkeley
Participants in the remote exploration phase will receive $500 in compute and a $4,200 stipend.
MATS general application process
MATS supports researchers and field-builders across seven tracks: Empirical, Theory, Strategy & Forecasting, Policy & Governance, Systems Security, Founding & Field-Building, and Biosecurity. You can apply to one or more of these tracks in the stage 1 application.
Stage 1 - General application (open until June 7th)
The general application should take around 1 to 2 hours depending on how many tracks you apply to. It asks for:
- Your background
- Short responses to questions for each track you're applying to.
- Contact details for two references. We won't reach out to them until later in the process.
Returning applicants from Summer 2026 can sign in to pre-fill their application.
For more on what we and mentors are look for, see getting into MATS.
Stage 2 - Central evaluations (early to late June)
After passing stage 1 evaluations, stage 2 uses standardized assessments to evaluate the skills most predictive of success for certain tracks.
- Empirical: one or two assessments on research taste and technical implementation skills.
- Policy & Governance: a writing and analytical reasoning assessment.
- Other tracks: proceed directly to stage 3 stream applications.
Stage 3 - Stream applications (June to late July)
Each track contains multiple streams, one or more mentors with a shared research agenda. If you advance, you'll apply to and rank the the specific streams you'd like to join. For each, you'll:
- Answer stream-specific questions, usually short responses, sometimes a longer research proposal.
- Complete an interview or work test, if the mentor requests it.
Offers (late July/early August)
In the last stage:
- Mentors review applications to their streams and submit applicant rankings.
- A final matching process uses both sides' rankings to send offers.
Offers go out in late July, and the program starts September 28th.