Cambridge Effective Altruism

Cambridge Effective Altruism (EA Cambridge) is a community of students and Cambridge-based individuals dedicated to applying evidence and reason to identify how they can do the most good. Founded in 2013, it is one of the oldest and most influential university EA groups globally, having played a central role in developing EA talent and spawning significant downstream organizations. The group's primary mission is to help people use their careers to address the world's most pressing problems, drawing on 80,000 Hours career frameworks and EA principles. EA Cambridge runs several structured programs: the Project-Based Fellowship (a 5-week introductory program with weekly discussions and a culminating research project), the Cambridge High Impact Research Project (CHIRP, an 8-week mentored research competition with £2,000 in prizes), a Career Planning Intensive for more advanced members, and a Global Health and Development Working Group. Weekly events include Lightning Talks and Dinners on Wednesdays and coworking sessions on weekends, all held free of charge. EA Cambridge is physically located at Meridian, 53-54 Sidney Street, Cambridge — a community hub that itself grew out of EA Cambridge and was formerly known as Effective Altruism Cambridge before rebranding in late 2024. Meridian is a separate legal entity (Meridian Impact CIC) that hosts EA Cambridge alongside the Cambridge AI Safety Hub, Cambridge Biosecurity Hub, Cambridge Existential Risk Initiative, and the ERA Fellowship. The group's most notable contribution to the broader ecosystem is incubating BlueDot Impact. In 2021, EA Cambridge members started running AI safety reading groups to fill a gap in structured AI safety education. These evolved into the AGI Safety Fundamentals course, and the team behind those courses eventually spun out as BlueDot Impact in 2022. BlueDot has since trained over 7,000 people and placed hundreds of graduates at Anthropic, DeepMind, and UK AISI. Dewi Erwan, the former Executive Director of EA Cambridge, is a co-founder of BlueDot Impact. EA Cambridge has received community building grants from CEA, the EA Infrastructure Fund, and funding from EA Funds (a reported $200,000 grant around 2022 for ecosystem-building). Open Philanthropy also has a dedicated grant page for Cambridge Effective Altruism's AI Safety Labs. The organization currently has at least one full-time paid organizer (Jian Xin) plus a volunteer committee.