Three intake windows. Rolling start dates.
Applications are reviewed by the MATS Residency team with input from the program's advisors where appropriate. Shortlisted applicants will be invited to an interview or a paid work test in early December 2026, depending on track and research area. Information about the interview and the panel members will be shared beforehand. Selected Residents will be informed by the end of 2026, with a plan to start in early 2027.
Application window
Aug 15 to Oct 31, 2026
The 2027 Winter intake window opens on 15 August 2026 and closes on 31 October 2026 (AoE, Anywhere on Earth).
The application form will be linked here when the window opens. 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.
Who should apply
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individuals capable of producing outstanding AI safety research, including many whose best work is confidential, unpublished, or outside traditional research roles.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.
What research is the Residency looking to fund?
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 AI existential risk.
- 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.
- Oversight and control of superhuman and automated systems: 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 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 existential risk from AI. You are welcome to propose your own idea and explain its theory of change. We are excited to see your ideas and how they could advance AI safety and alignment research.
Choosing your preferred office
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.
Application Requirements
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-authorisation 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. Unlike the logistics above, this note is read, since it helps us catch a mis-selected track early.
- 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.
Track-specific requirements
In addition to the materials above, each track requires the following.
Submit a brief research plan describing the work you intend to pursue during the Residency and its theory of change.
- Why Bridge? Write a short statement explaining why the Residency is the right opportunity for you now (e.g. career transition, timing, or barriers to entering the field). Where do you want to be afterward and how will the Residency help you get there?
- Future contributions to AI safety: Explain how your previous work prepares you to contribute to AI safety. If you are transitioning from another field, describe the methods, perspectives, or expertise you bring.
Submit a brief research plan describing the work you intend to pursue during the Residency and its theory of change.
- References: Your two referees should have directly supervised or evaluated your work, such as research supervisors, collaborators, or senior colleagues.
- Why Anchor? Explain why a long-term staff researcher path is the right next step for you rather than a PhD, postdoctoral position, or another role.
- Evidence of independent work: Describe your strongest evidence that you can take ownership of an open-ended problem and make meaningful progress. This may include independent research, a thesis, research conducted in industry, technical or policy work, or comparable experience. You do not need peer-reviewed publications or prior AI safety experience.
Submit a brief business plan describing the organization or research program you intend to build and its theory of change.
- Founding Rationale: Explain why your proposal requires a new organization rather than being pursued within an existing lab or institution.
- 90-day plan: Describe what you intend to accomplish during your first 90 days and what evidence would cause you to revise, pause, or stop the project.
- Governance and Publication Plan: Describe the proposed legal structure, governance, publication strategy, access to research outputs, and how you would manage information hazards or dual-use risks.
- Founding team: Describe your founding team or explain how you would build one. You may apply individually and do not need a co-founder, but make sure to identify any roles you still need and how you would recruit them.
Using AI tools
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, or whether you fit the profile — email us before applying.