Apply to be a mentor in SPAR!

By Agustín Covarrubias 🔸 @ 2025-06-24T23:00 (+22)

Mentor applications are now open for the Fall 2025 round of the Supervised Program for Alignment Research (SPAR), running from September 15 to December 20, 2025.

SPAR is a remote-first part-time program that connects mentors and mentees for three-month AI safety and governance research projects. Mentor apps are due July 15, and applications for mentees will run from July 27 to August 20. If you’re interested in participating as a mentee, you can express your interest here, and we’ll reach out to you once applications are open.

You can find out more about the program here. SPAR is run by Kairos, an AI safety fieldbuilding organization.

Should I apply as a mentor?

You might be a good fit to be a SPAR mentor if you are a graduate student, academic, full-time AI safety researcher, independent researcher, or have prior full-time relevant research experience (e.g., MATS, Astra, GovAI fellow, etc.). We’re interested in projects that cover technical AI safety, AI policy and governance, AI strategy, AI security, or societal impacts of transformative AI, and we are able to provide funding for compute costs. We don't require mentors to have previous experience providing research mentorship, and new mentors will receive guidance on this.

Regarding dedication, we expect most mentors will dedicate 2 to 15 hours a week, depending on how many mentees they’d like to take in and how much supervision they’re interested in providing. Mentors can decide whether to run the project or not based on the applications they get, making applications zero-commitment until one chooses to accept any mentees.