Applications open for the Secure Program Synthesis Fellowship

TL;DR: Applications are now open for the Secure Program Synthesis Fellowship, powered by Apart Research and Atlas computing. Apply by Sunday the 31st of May.This fellowship offers part-time research opportunities on mentor-led projects at the intersection of formal methods, AI systems, and security. Participants work in small teams to tackle challenging, underspecified problems in specification, validation, and adversarial robustness.Why This Matters As code generation becomes cheaper and more scalable, the bottleneck shifts from implementation to specification and validation. Many real-world systems lack clear or complete specifications, and errors at this level propagate across all downstream implementations. Improving how we elicit, formalize, and validate specs is critical to building secure and reliable AI systems.Projects and MentorsProjects are proposed and guided by field leaders in Formal Methods and AI Security, such as Erik Maijer and Shririam Krishnamurthi.​Our vision is high quality and productive collaborations that produce publishable and impactful work in a short time frame.For a full list of mentors, see here.ResourcesFor a curated list of secure program synthesis work across the field, see awesome-secure-program-synthesis.FAQWhat background do I need?No specific background is needed, so don't hesitate to apply. Useful skillsets include:Proof engineering (in verified software preferred, but math proofs in ITP is somewhat fine)Redteaming/pentesting, fuzzing, reverse engineeringSMT and model checkingCritical and secure systems designAgentdev, ML benchmarks/evals/environmentsIs this paid?By default, no. However, if a stipend would enable your participation, please indicate this in the application form or emailing us at secure-program-synthesis-fellowship@apartresearch.comCan I participate while working full-time?Only if you can dedicate at least 8 hours per week.What if I’m not accepted?You’ll stay in the Apart network for future projects and opportunit