Black in AI Safety and Ethics (BASE) Fellowship — Fellowship

The BASE Fellowship is run by Black in AI Safety and Ethics, an AI safety research lab that builds routes into alignment, security, governance and responsible AI work for Black researchers and professionals across the Black diaspora and the Global South. BASE is a fiscally sponsored project of Community Initiatives.

The fellowship is part-time and fully remote, and BASE says it accepts fellows anywhere in the world. Fellows pick one of four research tracks, spend the first weeks in a structured curriculum, then work on a mentored research project.

The Fall 2026 round ran from 5 October to 18 December 2026 and its applications are closed. BASE has also run a Spring cohort, so the fellowship repeats roughly twice a year.

Benefits & funding

A 10-week part-time program combining a taught curriculum with a mentored research project.
A choice of four tracks: AI Alignment (interpretability, oversight and control, agency), AI Security (cyber and information security, risk management, adversarial robustness, threat detection), AI Governance (policy, frameworks, evaluations, standards, systemic risk analysis) and Responsible AI (fairness and bias, transparency and explainability, accountability).
Weeks 1–5: track-specific training, AI safety seminars and milestone assignments. Live curriculum sessions run two hours a day, Monday to Friday; fellows attend at least three of the five weekly group sessions by video call and add a minimum of two hours of self-study per day.
Research phase: a focused AI safety project with a mentor, weekly mentor meetings of at least one hour, and weekly check-ins with a research manager.
Structured feedback from mentors at the midpoint and at the end of the research phase.
A capstone outcome such as a research preprint, a technical blog post, or an application for a further fellowship or grant.
BASE publishes no stipend, salary or participation fee for the fellowship on its program, FAQ or about pages.

Eligibility

Applicants must be 18 or older before the program start date.
Open to citizens of any country. BASE states that both U.S. and non-U.S. citizens may apply and that the fellowship accepts fellows globally.
Applicants must have completed a BA/BS degree or be in the process of completing one; students transferring into four-year institutions are eligible.
Technical tracks require strong coding and machine-learning skills. Governance tracks require demonstrated experience in policy, government, compliance, or trust and safety.
Fellows must commit 10–15 hours a week to research and learning and submit a capstone project.
The program is aimed at early- to mid-career students and professionals, and at more experienced people moving into AI safety research or practice.
BASE gives priority to applicants whose lived experience aligns with its mission of empowering the Black diaspora. No nationality, residency, gender or work-experience requirement is stated.

Can you apply?

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Education required
Bachelor Enrolled · Bachelor · Master Enrolled · Master · PhD Enrolled · PhD
Age requirement
≥ 18 yrs

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Application process

1
Choose one or more of the four tracks; BASE recommends applying to no more than two.
2
Submit the online application before the round’s deadline.
3
Applicants who reach the pre-screening stage have their references contacted by email.
4
Applicants who pass pre-screening then apply to several mentor-led research projects that match their interests.
5
Selected fellows join the curriculum phase and are matched to a mentor and project for the research phase.

Program timeline

Fall 2026 application deadline (now closed).
Jun 16, 2026
Fall 2026 program starts.
Oct 5, 2026
Fall 2026 program ends.
Dec 18, 2026
Note
the fellowship page gives 5 October as the start date, while the FAQ page lists 8 September for the same cohort. BASE has not published dates for the next round.