Grants Manager

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in United States, +2 more countries.

📋 Description

• Fund research into AI capabilities through a $5 million grant initiative.

• Assist in evaluating whether benchmark performance correlates with dependable performance in realistic tasks and workflows.

• Support the creation of high-fidelity, interactive environments that reflect the complexities of real-world work.

• Assess and enhance models' proficiency in planning, executing, and adapting across extended workflows.

• Propel agentic capabilities such as tool utilization, coordination, memory, and autonomous execution.

• Enhance performance on intricate, ambiguous, or poorly specified tasks.

• Develop improved data, rewards, and training methodologies for post-training processes.

• Establish robust metrics for capability, reliability, and practical utility.

• Facilitate access to Mercor experts for human grading and annotation.

• Provide access to internal evaluation infrastructure, subject to review.

• Connect grantees with researchers from cutting-edge labs and academic institutions.

⛳️ Requirements

• Applications are welcome from academic groups, independent researchers, and non-profit organizations.

• A specific and well-defined research question is required.

• Proposals should focus on real-world evaluations, environments, long-term tasks, agentic capabilities, reasoning and problem-solving, post-training, or evaluation methodology.

• A one- or two-page Expression of Interest is necessary.

• The Expression of Interest must include details about the team, their background, and research achievements.

• It should outline the proposed research project.

• The Expression of Interest must specify project outputs, anticipated impact, timelines, and resource needs.

• Grantees are expected to publish a paper, an open dataset, a public methodology, or a field-usable tool.

🏝️ Benefits

• Funding for autonomous frontier research.

• Access to Mercor's expert network for human grading and annotation.

• Access to Mercor's internal evaluation infrastructure, subject to review.

• Introductions to Mercor's network of researchers in cutting-edge labs and academia.

• Support for researcher hours.

• API credits.

• Stipends for attending events and conferences.