Three intake windows. Rolling start dates.

The 2027 Winter intake window opens on 25 August 2026 and closes on 31 October 2026 (AoE, Anywhere on Earth). You can apply now here.

The next application window after this one opens in March 2027. The Residency is open to applicants internationally, and MATS provides visa support for those relocating from abroad.

We assess the quality and seriousness of your work, not the titles or credentials on your CV. You do not need a PhD, a role with "researcher" in your title, an extensive publication record, or a prior background in AI safety to be a strong applicant. The Residency is looking for talented individuals capable of producing outstanding AI safety research, including many whose best work is confidential, unpublished, or outside traditional research roles. If you are unsure whether you fit, we encourage you to apply or email us first.

As part of your application, we ask you to submit a brief plan for the work you want to do during the Residency: a research plan, a plan for the safety-relevant work you want to build or test, or a business plan for Incubation. When we assess fit, we look for:

• Impact first: ambitious, longer-term work that does not sit neatly in academia or industry, judged above all by how much it could reduce catastrophic risk from AI.
• Depth: foundational questions that take years, not weeks, to pay off.

The areas we are most excited about right now are:

• Safe automation of alignment research: keeping AI-assisted research checkable and maintaining meaningful oversight as AI capabilities grow beyond human review.
• Safety cases, evaluations, AI strategy, AI assurance, and technical AI governance: building the evidence base and frameworks for informed decisions and verifiable policies about advanced AI.
• Agentic and multi-agent AI safety and alignment: safety and alignment for AI systems that act autonomously and interact with other agents.

We share these areas to be transparent about the directions we are especially interested in supporting, not to limit your independent research. Propose the work you believe matters most for AI alignment and reducing catastrophic risk from AI, and explain its theory of change. We are excited to see what you come up with.

Applicants indicate a preference for London, Berkeley, or Washington, DC in their application. Choose the location that provides the greatest proximity to the labs, collaborators, and research community most relevant to your work. The Residency is hybrid, and Residents are expected to spend at least a third of their Residency working in person from these offices. There is no formal base office assignment: Residents can spend their in-person time at any of the offices and move between offices during the program. If more than one office would work equally well for your research, please indicate this on your application.

All applicants submit the following materials through the online application:

• A short profile and eligibility section: Your contact details, current affiliation, CV (maximum 2 pages), office preference, availability for the intake, work-authorization status, highest degree, and any previous MATS involvement. This takes a few minutes, is mostly for routing and logistics, and is not itself assessed.
• Track choice: Your chosen track, and a two-to-three-sentence note on why it fits. Reviewers use this note to spot early on whether a different track might suit you better.
• References: Submit two references who can speak directly to the quality of your work. If your strongest work is confidential or was completed as part of a larger team, your referees may attest to your contribution in place of publicly available evidence. Some tracks have additional requirements for referees. See the track-specific requirements below.
• Representative work sample: Submit one work sample that best represents your strongest or most relevant work. This might include a paper, repository, technical report, evaluation, policy analysis, or another substantial research output.
• Written responses: Complete two short written responses and a brief counterfactual question about what you would do if you were not offered a place in the Residency.

You are welcome to use AI tools when preparing your application. We ask only that you briefly disclose whether and how you used them, and confirm that you agree with our AI-use policy. What we are assessing is your own reasoning and judgment, so the application should reflect your thinking. If English is not your first language, you are welcome to use AI to improve the clarity of your writing. Disclosed AI use is not a basis for rejection; reviewers consider it as one factor in assessing the extent to which your application reflects your own work and thought process.

If you are not sure whether the Residency is the right fit for you, including which track or office suits you best, feel free to email us before applying.