Pathfinder Fellowship
Accelerating campus leaders in AI safety and policy
Apply for Fall 2026
Applications close July 28 (11:59 PM, Anywhere on Earth)
What is pathfinder?
Pathfinder is a selective fellowship for students organizing technical AI safety or AI policy university groups around the world.
We provide mentorship, funding, and other resources to help fellows develop into on-campus leaders, preparing themselves and their group members for careers in the field.
The Fellowship
Funding
Pathfinder organizers can apply for funding to support their group's activities, including everything from compute to speaker events to pizza. Graduate students can also apply for a stipend to support their time spent on the group.
Mentorship
We pair accepted fellows with experienced organizers who will support your planning, share tried-and-tested advice, and work closely with you on your specific goals and challenges.
Community
Our workshops, Slack community, and virtual coffee chats provide opportunities to connect with other fellows and share resources, ideas, support, and inspiration.
Career support
Many of our mentors have worked at top AI safety orgs like METR, RAND, and Anthropic. They're here to offer you advice and help you navigate your own successful future in the field. Recent Pathfinder participants have landed AI safety roles at orgs like Coefficient Giving, Constellation, UK AISI, and Redwood Research, and gone on to MATS, Astra, Generator, Horizon, and other top fellowships.
Resources
Pathfinder hosts workshops on important field-building skills like doing outreach on campus, involving graduate students, and facilitating in-person courses. We also share access to the AI Safety Groups Resource Center, which contains dozens of articles on how to build and manage an AIS university group.
Impact
Organizing is one of the highest-leverage things you can do for the field, and for your own trajectory. Pathfinder helps you help students at your university learn and upskill, so they can help the world safely navigate the arrival of transformative AI.
Testimonials
Sanyu was great; he was always super helpful and also very flexible and considerate of timing! He has a wealth of experience that was useful for me.
Jasmine
Cornell University
Incredibly valuable to get personalised feedback on ideas over several weeks. You get support and feedback over the whole 'product' process for anything new you want to run: conception, planning, outreach/marketing, execution and evaluation.
Theo
Durham University
The programme was set up well, communication was consistently good, and everyone involved with the programme was friendly. Engaging with FSP was always a better use of time than the counterfactual.
James
University of Oxford
The resources and advice shared were great… I have also received a lot of ideas on how to continue my personal career in AI safety.
Carola
University of Turin
[Without the program], I can't imagine my group being as impactful. I believe the group wouldn't even exist! But if it had, I estimate it would have been around 5 times less impactful.
João
Fundação Getulio Vargas
THANK YOU to the Kairos team!!!
Zephy
University of Chicago
FAQ
Who are we?
The Pathfinder Fellowship is run by Kairos, a nonprofit whose mission is to help society navigate the transition to transformative AI. In addition to Pathfinder, we run several other programs:
- The Supervised Program for Alignment Research (SPAR), which provides research opportunities for early-career students and professionals looking to enter the field.
- The Generator Residency, a 3-month residency where residents pitch, build, and ship projects that build capacity and infrastructure across the AI safety ecosystem.
- The Global Challenges Project, a series of intensive three-day workshops for students on how to think critically about AI safety and biosecurity.
Questions? Contact us at pathfinder@kairos-project.org.