Through the mats program, we (Alex Turner and Alex Cloud1) help alignment researchers grow from seeds into majestic trees. We have fun, consistently make real alignment progress, and help scholars tap into their latent abilities.
Team Shard in mats 6.0 during the summer of ’24. From left: Evžen Wyitbul,Jacob Goldman-Wetzler, Alex Turner, Alex Cloud, and Joseph Miller. Team Shard shirts are available (nearly at-cost) at shardtheory.clothing. The only way to get a colored shirt, though, is to join Team Shard! ;)
Our mentees now fill impactful roles.
Lisa Thiergart (mats 3.0) moved on to being a research lead at miri and is now a senior director at the SL5 task force.
Alex Cloud (mats 6.0) went from mentee to co-mentor in one round and also secured a job at Anthropic. Lead author on the Subliminal Learning paper.
Jacob Goldman-Wetzler (mats 6.0) also accepted an offer from Anthropic!
Luke Marks accepted work with Redwood Research after mats 8.0.
And several mentees have gone on to the Anthropic Fellows program.
We likewise have a strong track record in research outputs, including
I really appreciate the calmness Alex [Turner] brings. He creates a stress-free environment where it feels easy and low-risk to have lots of ideas, pivot frequently, and generally be mentally nimble.
Compared to other mats streams, Team Shard has some of the best team culture and the highest mentor investment. With us, you aren’t looking at a half-hour call with a remote mentor once a week. TurnTrout holds a ~45 minute weekly meeting with each scholar, in addition to a weekly in-person team lunch and sporadic meetings with Alex Cloud.
Our team culture is tight-knit and fun, extending beyond the research itself. For example, in the summer of 2025, mats 8.0 lifted together every Wednesday and Thursday.
Team Shard helped me break into the AI safety world, building my connections but also my understanding of the research process and valuable areas to focus on. Alex [Turner] encouraged me to take my ideas seriously and to develop them further. I quite enjoyed working with him! [Working with Team Shard] has made a life-changing difference.
Being a member of Team Shard helped me grow tremendously as a researcher. It gave me the necessary skills and confidence to work in AI Safety full-time.
I learned how to make progress when everyone in the room is uncertain. If you’re interested in learning what making progress on a hard problem actually feels like, Team Shard is where you want to be.
During my time with Team Shard, I worked closely with Alex Cloud. He is an amazing mentor. He took my ideas seriously, showed me how to design, code, and run experiments efficiently, taught me how to write well, encouraged me to do bold and ambitious research, and has continued to support me in my career beyond mats.
If I had to highlight one way I grew during mats, it would be in how much my thinking on research path-to-impact has matured. [This maturation] is in large part thanks to my many productive discussions with Cloud—he has thought deeply about alignment, has unique takes, and actively engages with his mentees’ ideas. For prospective mentees considering alternate opportunities (e.g. focusing on their PhD work, doing an internship at a company, doing other mats streams), I would venture that they are unlikely to experience this kind of growth to the same degree elsewhere.
In short, working with Cloud has been one of the great privileges of my research career.
On Team Shard, I learned how to form my own opinions about alignment, develop concrete hypotheses based on these, and address my hypotheses empirically. Alex Turner and Alex Cloud provided consistently thoughtful guidance and inspiration that enabled my progress. I also had a ton of fun with the team.
P.S. Team Shard made me realize potential I did not know I had as a weightlifter.
