Disclosure: I used an LLM to help draft this announcement.

AIxBio Africa is looking for a Director of Research (remote, volunteer)

Hi everyone,

I'm the founder of AIxBio Africa, a research and capacity-building organization working at the intersection of AI safety, biology, and biosecurity, with a focus on African contexts.

We're currently looking for someone to join us as Director of Research and help shape the next stage of our work.

I wanted to share the opportunity here because I think some of the research questions we're working on are relevant to people interested in reducing risks from advanced AI, particularly AI-enabled biological risks.

Why we're doing this work

As AI systems become more capable, understanding how they might contribute to biological risks, and how well existing safeguards work, is increasingly important.

One area we're particularly interested in is whether the safeguards used by advanced AI systems behave consistently across languages and contexts.

A lot of the existing research and evaluations are centred on English. We think there is value in examining how these systems behave in African languages and in contexts that may otherwise receive relatively little attention.

Our aim is to contribute useful evidence to AI safety and biosecurity research while building opportunities for African researchers to participate in this work.

We recently completed our first research fellowship, with four fellows completing the programme and producing four public research outputs. These were fellow-led outputs rather than peer-reviewed publications, and the programme gave us useful lessons about research supervision, methodological review, and the support researchers need to produce stronger work.

We now want to build on that experience with a more structured research programme.

What the Director of Research would do

We're looking for someone who can provide intellectual and methodological leadership as our research activities develop.

The role would involve:

• Helping set research priorities and develop projects around AI safety, biological risks, multilingual evaluations, and related topics.
• Reviewing research designs and methodologies, and helping ensure our work meets appropriate standards of rigour.
• Supporting researchers and fellows, working with mentors and subject-matter experts, and reviewing research outputs before publication.
• Helping establish responsible research practices, including how we handle potentially sensitive findings, disclosure, and information hazards.
• Contributing to collaborations and the development of our planned AIxBio Africa Working Paper Series.

This is not intended to be a purely advisory title. We're looking for someone who would be actively involved in shaping the research and helping us make better decisions about what to study and how.

Who we're looking for

We'd particularly welcome applications from researchers with experience in AI safety, AI evaluations, biosecurity, biological risk assessment, machine learning, computational biology, or closely related fields.

Experience designing and conducting research is especially important. We'd also value experience supervising researchers, reviewing publications, or leading collaborative research projects.

A PhD is not a strict requirement. We're more interested in demonstrated research ability, sound judgement, and the ability to identify weaknesses in research methods and improve them.

Candidates do not need to be based in Africa, although an interest in supporting African research capacity and engaging with regional research contexts is important.

A note about the organization and the role

AIxBio Africa is still an early-stage organization. Much of our work has been carried out by volunteers, and we are currently seeking funding to develop more sustainable research and organizational capacity.

This is currently a volunteer position, with flexible, part-time involvement. We hope to move toward funded research roles as resources become available, but cannot promise future compensation.

We're also still developing some of the structures, processes, and partnerships that a more established research organization would already have. The incoming Director would have the opportunity to help build these, but should also expect a fairly hands-on role.

I think it's important to be clear about that from the beginning.

Applying

You can learn more about AIxBio Africa at aixbioafrica.org.

Apply for Director of Research: Application form

I'd also be happy to answer questions about the role, our current research direction, or the organization in the comments.

And if you know someone whose research background might be a good fit, I'd appreciate you sharing the opportunity with them.

Thank you!

Fatika
Founder and Executive Director, AIxBio Africa