Francis Rhys Ward

London, UK

Bio

Updated 03/22/26

Francis Rhys Ward is an AI safety researcher who completed his PhD at Imperial College London through the Safe and Trusted AI Centre for Doctoral Training, with a thesis focused on formalising and evaluating deception in AI agents. He joined Redwood Research as an Astra Fellow in January 2025. He holds an MSc in Artificial Intelligence from Imperial College London (2019-2020) and an undergraduate degree in Mathematics from Cardiff University, including a placement at CERN and the University of Warwick on particle physics. His research spans conceptual and philosophical work, theoretical research on agents and deception, empirical evaluations of frontier AI systems, and AI control, with notable work on sandbagging (strategic underperformance on capability evaluations) and AI personhood. He is a member of the Causal Incentives Working Group, a member of the FLI AI Existential Safety Community, a scientific advisor to LawZero, and a MATS mentor. He has previously worked at the Centre for Assuring Autonomy, the Center on Long-Term Risk, the Centre for the Governance of AI, and the UK's AI Security Institute, and ran an AGI Safety reading group and seminar series at Imperial College London.