Sci.STEPS opens applications for mentors for the 2027 season

Sci.STEPS is now accepting mentor applications for a new season! (See this post for a description of the previous season.)

Sci.STEPS is a free, volunteer-run online mentorship program for early-career researchers, with an AI Safety division alongside STEM fields. As in previous seasons, the season runs February–April 2027, and mentors commit to a minimum of 2 hours per month for 3 months.

Every season, each mentor-mentee pair meets six times over three months. Mentors share their experience, guidance and support with early-career researchers facing a career decision or transition. It is also a chance to give back and to meet motivated people at the start of their careers.
In addition, Sci.STEPS offers optional webinars on general career development topics such as CV writing, mental health, and coaching.
Participants across all divisions gave the program a 9.8/10 approval rating.

Last season, we piloted an AI Safety division. We had only two mentors in the field but received multiple mentee applications, and the two selected mentees told us the experience was highly useful.

We’d love to have more mentors this season. More mentors means we can support more mentees, and it would also let us launch an AI Safety pod. We’ve already tried the pod model in other disciplines (for example, a sci-comm pod). Participants meet as a group, network, brainstorm career approaches, and work on a small group project. The pod includes all AI Safety mentors and mentees and usually meets biweekly. It is voluntary and in addition to the 1:1 pairings: mentors only commit to the six 1:1 meetings. The model has been highly successful elsewhere, but it needs enough participants to work: a pod works best with 6–10 people, and since not everyone joins, we would ideally have 5–7 AI Safety mentors. We expect to find mentees for them, as last season we received significantly more mentee applications than there were mentors.

Who should apply? If you work (or worked previously) at an AI Safety organization (technical, governance, or field building), please apply. We also welcome applications from past mentees of other mentorship programs, such as MATS or SPAR, and from our own previous season: alumni know how to get into good programs and can share that experience. Mentors from other STEM fields are welcome too.

Deadline: November 8, 2026, 23:59 CET. Apply here.