2026 AI/ML Research Fellow

10 places are open for the 2026 term, with a duration of 6 or 12 months at the applicant's option.

The intent of the fellowship is to focus on high risk research: ambitious projects that may not produce results, but will have lasting impact if they work.

We believe that publication in AI/ML has become overly biased towards short-term and iterative results, despite major gaps in our understanding of how to build optimal models.

Our focus is on frontier research: order-of-magnitude improvements, rather than disposable papers barely better than baseline.

The goal of these fellowships is to give awardees uninterrupted time to focus on harder open problems, with adequate compute, talented peers, and weekly 1:1 mentorship from senior researchers but without chasing specific metrics.

You will be expected to spend about 80% of your time on your own research, and up to 20% of your time either assisting other fellows or participating in wider research programs at IMI. We focus largely on applied research and its applications to online security problems, but often publish and support frontier research aligned with our broader interests. Serving hundreds of millions of people gives us a unique perspective as to what works at scale.

Eligibility: previous fellows and research staff have come from disparate backgrounds, including early career researchers previously at MSR, FAIR, Mila, MPI, etc. and self taught senior engineers transitioning into research.

We do not discriminate on the basis of pedigree or age. If you have done interesting work, that is enough. Conversely, if you don't already have publications that show you can do good self-directed research then this is not the right opportunity.

Location: you may reside anywhere in the world, excluding sanctioned jurisdictions. This will be a remote fellowship. We do not sponsor visas.

Deliverables: we do not have hard targets, and focus on quality. Fellows generally get 1-2 papers with code done in a year, targeting NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, etc. At the end of your fellowship, if the threshold for refereed publication is unmet we will expect a final report, which may be published as a blog post.

Full details are available at: https://www.imachines.com/imi-ai-ml-fellowships-2025-2026-high-risk-research

(imachines dot com slash imi-ai-ml-fellowships-2025-2026-high-risk-research)

Applying: send a brief bio / CV link via this page. Include 1) the topic you are interested in working on, 2) a few lines on any relevant prior work you've done, 3) your github / scholar / x links, 4) your desired start date, duration, and other obligations (if any) during that period, and 5) a brief analysis of one of the projects outlined on the page linked above.

Each project we have listed intentionally includes some gaps or glosses. List the ones you see, and how you'd solve them. Alternatively, if you dislike the projects outlined under a particular topic, briefly write up your own idea and why it is more promising, along with your estimate of time and compute required.

Deadline: Admitting fellows in two cohorts. Deadlines for consideration: April 1 and September 1 2026. 3 week decision period. Rolling thereafter.

Compensation: competitive location-adjusted stipend, conference and travel support for conferences with accepted papers.

After the fellowship: past fellows have stayed on in full-time roles at IMI or co-founded AI unicorns. This is a selective process, so we claim little credit for their success. However, we will support your next steps.

Selection criteria: novelty and importance, clarity of approach, feasibility given time/compute, alignment with topics. Panel review and one interview.

Using AI: Coding agents are indisputably useful tools. We provide access to the top 3 models, and were early adopters of evals-first development flows. Familiarity with coding using agents is part of all interviews. However, reliability and correctness are critical for us. You will need to read and understand every line of code with your name on it, and it will be reviewed by both people and machines.

Selection is based on merit. We promote equality of opportunity, and welcome applications from anyone with talent, skills and potential. IMI is an equal opportunity employer, and does not discriminate on the basis of age, disability, sex, orientation, race, religion or belief.

Please note that all positions require pre-employment screening, including third-party verification of work history, education, and identity, as well as a final in-person interview and identity verification step, which will be conducted in your country of residence.