We are now hiring for one role: Residence Coordinator (Berkeley).
Meet the Team
Christian Smith – Co-Director
Christian is Co-Director of MATS and a Board Member and Co-Founder of the London Initiative for Safe AI (LISA). Previously, he studied particle physics and pedagogy at Stanford University, worked in operations at multiple organizations including Lightcone Infrastructure, performed research at CERN, and organized educational programs like the Uncommon Sense Seminar.
Ryan Kidd – Co-Director
Ryan is Co-Director of MATS, a Board Member and Co-Founder of the London Initiative for Safe AI (LISA), and a Manifund Regrantor. Previously, he completed a BSc (Hons) and PhD in Physics at the University of Queensland (UQ), where he ran UQ’s Effective Altruism student group for three years, tutored physics courses, volunteered in academic, mental health, and ally roles, and volunteered at the UQ Junior Physics Odyssey.
Laura Vaughan – Research Management Lead
Laura leads the Research Management Team at MATS, where she coordinates various program elements in Berkeley, coaches scholars to optimize program outcomes, and collaborates with Henry to support scholars and shape the London extension. A Thiel Fellow alum from 2017, Laura studied physics at the University of Waterloo and brings diversified experience in ML model dataset creation and training, entrepreneurship, full-stack software engineering, and biomedical research.
William Brewer – Operations Generalist
William is an Operations Generalist at MATS where he organizes events and coordinates with service providers. William also works in prompt engineering and software development, with a focus on generative musical systems. He studied philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin.
Rocket Drew – Community Manager
Rocket is the Community Manager at MATS, where he oversees the community's health and well-being. Additionally, Rocket is chief author of MATS program retrospectives. Rocket graduated from Brown University in 2022, where he studied Computer Science and Economics.
Carson Jones – Research Manager
Carson is a Research Manager at MATS where he does 1-1 coaching with scholars to help improve their productivity, research process, motivation, etc. Prior to MATS, Carson worked at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute as their Office Manager and, separately, has continued to maintain a private practice of coaching AI Safety researchers from various organizations.
McKenna Fitzgerald – Research Manager
McKenna is a Research Manager at MATS where she works with scholars to troubleshoot research issues, draft grant applications, work through career planning, and other meta-level support aimed at helping scholars get the most out of MATS during and after the program. Prior to MATS, she worked as the Deputy Director of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute working on AI policy and ethics research. She holds a BA in Philosophy from UC, Berkeley (2018).
Juan Gil – Research Manager
Juan is a Research Manager at MATS where he coaches scholars and has led applicant selection and internal impact evaluations. Prior to MATS, Juan worked as a professional community builder for the Boston AI safety and Effective Altruism communities. He holds a B.S. in Mathematics with Computer Science from MIT (2020).
Mitchell Reynolds – Operations Generalist
Mitchell works on the Operations team and occasionally on special projects like applicant selection. Prior to joining MATS, he worked as a Data Science Manager and as a Management Consultant. Mitchell is a first-generation college graduate with a B.A. in Economics from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.
Henry Sleight – Program Coordinator (London)
Prior to MATS, Henry co-founded the Global Challenges Project, and worked at EA Oxford as Executive Director, where he did EA and x-risk community building for top university students. He holds an undergraduate degree in Classics from Oxford (2021). Henry coordinates and leads on design for the extension programs. On the side, he has managed Ethan Perez's independent research fellows in adversarial robustness, model organisms, and model self-prediction. Henry is also Chair of the advisory board of LISA.
Matthew Wearden – Program Generalist (London)
Prior to MATS, Matthew has produced AI governance research and attended ARENA. He has been a part of the AI safety community for close to 6 years. Matthew worked in a project management capacity at Jane Street for almost 3 years on operations and corporate governance teams. He holds an undergraduate degree in Mathematics from Cambridge (2020). Matthew co-leads the extension programme with Henry, working on strategy and processes. As part of this, he research manages scholars on multiple streams.