Senior Researcher, Civil Safety Sciences

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in United States.

📋 Description

• Execute structured horizon-scanning for innovative AI-enabled hazard categories and formulate methodologies for rigorously assessing threats that lack historical baseline data or established scientific communities.

• Explore next-generation detection sciences, including dynamic and adaptive pathogen surveillance, alongside other open-ended approaches for emerging hazard modalities.

• Conduct feasibility studies on deep resilience and lifeline capacities designed to operate when traditional infrastructure, sunlight, or centralized coordination cannot be presumed.

• Examine biosphere-scale vulnerabilities, including geoengineering, synthetic microorganisms for terraforming or remediation, and unconventional environmental toxicology stemming from AI-enabled activities.

• Identify and selectively promote defensive, stabilizing, and transparency-enhancing technologies that favor humanity through differential acceleration.

• Develop scientific metaresearch on the generation, aggregation, and translation of evidence into action, especially where conventional empirical feedback loops are weak.

• Enhance scientific coordination capacity through standards, gatherings, and cross-border collaborations, while equipping frontline responders and community networks with practical decision support.

• Co-author grant submissions, create analytical tools that clarify catastrophic risks, and effectively communicate findings to policymakers, technical audiences, and the general public.

• Collaborate across CARMA programs to merge civil safety perspectives with broader risk assessment, governance, and technical safety initiatives.

⛳️ Requirements

• An advanced degree (PhD or more than one MS preferred) in a hard science or engineering discipline, demonstrating a wide-ranging knowledge across multiple natural science fields. Strong candidates may come from various backgrounds, including biosecurity, microbiology, ecology, environmental or atmospheric science, agricultural and food systems science, chemistry, materials science, physics, public health, biomedical or systems engineering, resilience engineering, security sciences, or related disciplines.

• Significant familiarity with adversarial environments and reasoning, broadly defined: rooted in security studies, biosecurity, cybersecurity, defense analysis, red-teaming, safety engineering, dual-use technology assessment, or comparable experience in rigorously reasoning about deliberate misuse and worst-case scenarios.

• Proven ability to carefully reason about hazards that lack robust historical data or established detection paradigms.

• Over 5 years of relevant research or applied experience, with a demonstrated history of managing independent projects from conception to delivery.

• A strong publication record or an equivalent body of work focused on technological risk, resilience, detection science, or related fields.

• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, with a proven ability to translate technical information for policymakers, funders, and non-specialist audiences.

• A systems thinking approach and comfort with significant uncertainty and rapidly evolving knowledge landscapes.

• A solid understanding of contemporary AI capabilities and trends, sufficient to anticipate how advancing AI transforms threat and defense landscapes in your areas of expertise.

• Self-motivated, exercising sound judgment in identifying high-leverage problems under broad rather than micromanaged direction.

🏝️ Benefits

• Opportunity to work on cutting-edge research and impactful projects.

• Collaborate with a diverse team of experts across multiple disciplines.

• Engage in a dynamic work environment that encourages innovation and professional growth.