Neel Nanda’s Winter 2026 stream applications are due August 29

All other stream applications are expected to open in late August. See the currently confirmed list of Winter 2026 mentors below.

Application process

Steps in the application process

  1. Create an application account. You’ll use this to access all applications materials.

  2. Once open, submit a MATS pre-application. This is required by all streams.

  3. Submit applications to the MATS stream(s) you want to work with. You must submit at least one stream-specific application for your MATS application to be considered. You can and should apply to all of the MATS streams that interest you! See a list of past streams and their applications below.

  4. Complete additional evaluations. Depending on the streams you apply to, you may be required to complete a coding screen, interviews, or other evaluations after submitting your application. The process, however, is not standardized between streams; not being contacted for an interview does not necessarily mean that your application is not in consideration.

Neel leads the mechanistic interpretability team at Google DeepMind, focusing on reverse-engineering the algorithms learned by neural networks to differentiate between helpful and deceptively aligned models and better understand language model cognition.

Neel Nanda’s stream applications open earlier than the others to accommodate a unique, intensive training phase.

Accepted applicants will first participate in a five-week exploration program, after which a subset will be selected to continue into the full MATS program.

Timeline:

  • Applications due Aug 29

  • Decisions released Sept 16

  • Exploration phase Sept 29 - Oct 31 (5 week online program)

  • Research phase decisions Nov 6

  • Research phase Jan 5 - March 28 (12 week in-person program)

Tips for applying

  • Make sure to check your spam folders for emails! You may wish to automatically filter for emails from applications@matsprogram.org to ensure you don’t miss any emails.

  • Submit your application materials early. In the past, some applicants have had technical problems in the hour leading up to the application deadline.

  • Mentors will primarily evaluate candidates based on the submission of their own stream-specific applications, though all mentors will have access to application materials submitted to other streams.

  • Marius Hobbhahn

    Shi Feng

    Roland S. Zimmermann

    Buck Shlegeris

    Erik Jenner

    Eli Lifland

    Lee Sharkey

    Stephen Casper

    Owain Evans

    Jan Betley

    Ethan Perez

    Micah Carroll

    Stephen McAleer

    Michael Chen

    Nina Panickssery

    Neel Nanda

    Tomek Korbak

    David Lindner

    Daniel Kang

    Adam Shai

    Arthur Conmy

    Paul M. Riechers

    Jesse Hoogland

    Luca Righetti

    Joe Benton

    Thomas Larsen

    Alex Turner

    Oliver Ethan Richardson

    Michael Dennis

    Alan Chan

    Kyle Fish

    Francis Rhys Ward

    Thomas Kwa

    Andi Peng

    Mary Phuong

    Sebastien Krier

    Alex Cloud

    Victoria Krakovna

    Scott Emmons

    Fabien Roger

    Cozmin Ududec

    Patrick Butlin

    Jacob Pfau

    Daniel Murfet

    Roger Grosse

    Tom Davidson

    Rose Hadshar

    Samuel Marks

    Samuel R. Bowman

    Romeo Dean

    Yonadav Shavit

    Keri Warr

    McKenna Fitzgerald