Research Manager, AIxBio; Part-time

Position: Research Manager, AIxBio (Part-time)

This is a part-time position designed for researchers, postdoctoral fellows, or professionals who want to contribute to the AIxBio fellowship while maintaining other commitments.

About Cambridge Boston Alignment Initiative

The Cambridge Boston Alignment Initiative (CBAI) is a nonprofit research organization working to advance research and education directed towards ensuring that society navigates a safe and beneficial transition to advanced AI systems. Our work takes the form of producing original research efforts and accelerating AI safety research through fellowship programs.

After a successful 2025 launch of our AI Safety Research Fellowship — whose inaugural cohort published a spotlight paper at the Mechanistic Interpretability Workshop at NeurIPS, placed papers at ICLR, and produced fellows now at Goodfire and Redwood Research — we’re rapidly scaling in 2026. As part of this growth, we are launching the inaugural AIxBio Research Fellowship, bringing the same high‑touch, mentor‑driven research model to the intersection of AI and biosecurity.

The Role

You’ll work closely with fellows and their mentors, biosecurity researchers, AI safety researchers, and domain experts from academia and industry, to support cutting‑edge work at the intersection of AI and biosecurity. This might include capability evaluations on biological systems, regulatory frameworks for mitigating dual‑use research risks, or other research agendas at the frontier of AI‑enabled biosecurity threats. We are open to hiring Research Managers with technical research experience or policy and governance research experience.

For the right fit, we are open to adjusting the scope and compensation of this role.

Research Management (0.7 FTE)

• Conduct frequent 1‑1s with your fellows, providing feedback on research progress and helping them overcome obstacles, including debugging research designs, preparing literature scaffolds, and supporting data collection, analysis, and methodology development
• Provide substantive feedback on fellow research and help CBAI create an environment that nudges fellows toward rigor and clarity
• Connect fellows with resources, literature, and opportunities relevant to AI x biosecurity during and after the fellowship
• Communicate with fellows’ mentors to define clear research objectives and support fellows’ research progression
• Contribute to fellow selection by reviewing and interviewing candidates to ensure the cohort has strong epistemics and a relevant background

Program Management & Development (0.3 FTE)

• Contribute to the design of reading groups, workshops, and supplementary programming for the AIxBio cohort
• Support special projects aligned with your strengths, such as applicant selection, evaluation frameworks, or mentor onboarding
• Meet weekly with program leadership to enhance feedback loops and continuously improve the program
• Stay current on developments at the intersection of AI and biosecurity relevant to your fellows’ work
• Prepare periodic briefs on recent developments in the field for fellows

About You

We expect you to be characterized by most of the qualities listed below.

Experience supporting complex intellectual work. You have helped others execute complex analytical or research projects — through teaching, managing technical teams, conducting your own research, consulting, or coordinating academic programs.
You understand the research process from the inside. You’ve done substantial analytical work yourself, whether in academia, policy analysis, consulting, or industry research. You can recognize when a research plan is solid vs. hand‑wav‑y, identify blockers in someone’s thinking, and suggest concrete next steps.
Familiarity with AI x biosecurity. You have meaningful exposure to biosecurity, AI safety, or the intersection of the two — through research, policy work, or adjacent professional experience. You don’t need to be a specialist, but you need enough context to engage substantively with the research your fellows are doing.
Skilled at developmental feedback. You know how to give constructive criticism that moves work forward. You can help people strengthen their arguments, tighten their methodology,…