Welcome to ERA

We are a global consortium of researchers dedicated to understanding and mitigating risks in an ERA of transformative AI. We do so by:

  • Supporting early-career researchers with resources and mentorship to work on a research project in AI safety, AI governance, or Technical AI Governance.

  • Developing a strong community and talent pipeline, helping our alumni pivot into AI safety careers and research.

  • Partnering with various institutions across the world working within our focus areas.

Our Mission

Frontier AI labs are developing increasingly powerful systems that offer extraordinary benefits, but also introduce unprecedented risks. To navigate these challenges safely, we need coordinated expertise across technical, governance, and policy domains. At ERA, we are building the community and knowledge base necessary to mitigate catastrophic risks from frontier AI.

Through the Cambridge ERA:AI Fellowship, we identify and support talented researchers and entrepreneurs, providing them with targeted mentorship, research management support, and institutional connections to drive tangible progress on important AI safety and governance challenges. With a distinctive focus on technical governance, we facilitate high-impact collaborations where they are most urgently needed. Our alumni now lead work at RAND, the UK AI Security Institute, and other key institutions actively shaping the future of AI.

Beyond our fellowship programmes, we are cultivating a robust research ecosystem and infrastructure to ensure that advanced AI systems remain safe, beneficial, and aligned with humanity’s best interests.

Meet the Team

  • Photo of Nandini Shiralkar

    Nandini Shiralkar

    FOUNDER

  • Photo of Harrison Gietz

    Harrison Gietz

    PROGRAMME DIRECTOR
    Prior to joining ERA as Program Director, Harrison served as co-director of the Cambridge AI Safety Hub (CAISH), where he led efforts to support students and researchers working to reduce catastrophic risks from AI. He has a research background across machine learning, robustness in natural language processing, and experimental physics. Presently, Harrison is most interested in work related to compute governance and model weight security. 

  • Photo of Marta Strzyga

    Marta Strzyga

    OPERATIONS MANAGER
    Marta previously worked as a contracted recruitment consultant for Lead Exposure Elimination Project (LEEP). They have experience in academic research, publishing, office administration and corporate finance, alongside operations at non-profits. She studied Japanese at SOAS and psychology at University of Glasgow, and speak Polish, French and Japanese.

  • Photo of Usman Anwar

    Usman Anwar

    TECHNICAL RESEARCH LEAD
    Usman is a PhD student in Computational and Biological Learning lab at Cambridge University, UK. He is interested in reinforcement learning, multi-agent learning and AI Safety. See https://uzman-anwar.github.io/ for more details.

  • Photo of Cameron Tice

    Cameron Tice

    TECHNICAL GOVERNANCE
    RESEARCH LEAD
    Cameron is a Marshall Scholar and MPhil student at the University of Cambridge, completing his thesis on automating the creation and validation of computational models of behavior using LLMs. He recently completed a fellowship with Apart Research, investigating how noise injection can be leveraged to identify LLMs deliberately underperforming on evaluations.

  • Photo of Kristina Fort

    Kristina Fort

    GOVERNANCE RESEARCH MANAGER
    Kristina is an AI governance researcher and entrepreneur. Most recently, she co-founded a new magazine called AI Policy Bulletin. Kristina previously worked for the Czech government and the EU institutions. She also completed several AI governance courses and Fellowships, publishing her research on institutions in international AI governance. She studied at Sciences Po Paris and LSE.

  • Photo of Morgan Simpson

    Morgan Simpson

    GOVERNANCE RESEARCH LEAD

  • Peter Gebauer

    TECHNICAL GOVERNANCE RESEARCH MANAGER

Previous Research Managers at ERA: Richard Moulange, Yulu Niki Pi, Fazl Barez, Rudolf Laine, Moritz von Knebel, Tilman Räuker, Oscar Delaney, Gideon Futerman, Irina Gueorguiev, Joël Christoph, Will Aldred, Jaime Bernardi, Herbie Bradley, and Dewi Erwan.

The ERA Fellowship has run every summer since 2021. Thus far, we have supported over 85 early career researchers from 10+ countries through our programme, spanning projects related to AI safety, biosecurity, nuclear security, and extreme climate change mitigation.

In 2024, we shifted our focus to AI safety and governance research. Our alumni have used their time and experience at ERA to secure positions in technical AI safety and policy within governments, AI research centres and influential think tanks.

Our History