Cambridge AI Safety Hub

Cambridge AI Safety Hub (CAISH) was founded in September 2022 in Cambridge, UK, with the aim of supporting people in Cambridge and around the world who want to contribute to addressing societal-scale risks from advanced AI. The organization started with a single full-time organizer, Hannah Erlebach, who ran the hub until summer 2023. After a leadership transition supported through the Open Philanthropy University Organiser Fellowship, the hub continued under new leadership and has since expanded its programs and community significantly. CAISH currently operates three main programs. The Alignment Fellowship is a free, five-week in-person course held each year in Cambridge, offering parallel tracks for participants with technical backgrounds (covering model training, interpretability, and AI control) and governance backgrounds (covering policy, regulation, and geopolitical strategy). The Alignment Desk is a structured writing and research accountability program for community members with existing AI safety exposure who want to produce and publish serious work. MARS (Mentorship for Alignment Researchers) is a part-time research mentorship program, founded in 2024 by former CAISH director Chloe Li, that pairs teams of two to four participants with experienced mentors from organizations such as Redwood Research, MIRI, UK AISI, and Stanford for 10-12 weeks of remote research following an in-person kick-off week in Cambridge. MARS provides participants with travel funding, accommodation, office space, catering, and over $2,000 in compute credits at no cost. CAISH is legally constituted as a project of Meridian Impact CIC (UK Companies House number 13653958, formerly Cambridge Effective Altruism CIC), a Community Interest Company headquartered at 53-54 Sidney Street in central Cambridge. This arrangement gives CAISH access to Meridian's co-working space, meeting rooms, and broader network of researchers working on AI safety, biosecurity, and related cause areas. The hub is currently co-directed by Justin Dollman and Gaurav Yadav, with support from a student committee and a Director of Events and Operations. CAISH has received operating cost funding from Open Philanthropy (grant announced November 2025). Alumni and community members have gone on to organizations including the UK AI Safety Institute, DeepMind, GovAI, Apollo Research, MATS, and Anthropic.