Residency Program - Fall Cohort

About us:

Astera is a 501(c)(3) philanthropic foundation on a mission to help lead humanity’s transition to a scientifically advanced, abundant future. In service of this mission, we support the creation of public goods for science and technology. You can read about our mission and vision here.

Astera is opening a call for the Fall 2026 cohort of our major science residency program, a 12-18 month fully funded program that seeds and supports mission-driven, open projects that can catalyze further private and public sector advancements. We plan to welcome our residents to our headquarters in Emeryville, California, where we are building a hub for open science, data, and technology.

A full write-up of the program is available here; applicants should review it thoroughly before proceeding.

The Final date to receive applications for our Fall cohort starting in August is April 19th.

You can apply to one or more of the below tracks when you apply. We have listed below examples of the types of projects within these tracks that we know we are interested in, but we encourage you to apply with topics that also go beyond these areas.

We are interested in supporting ambitious projects at the interface of neuroscience and artificial intelligence that deepen our understanding of the biological brain and enable the development of more powerful, robust, and interpretable artificial systems. We seek efforts with clear potential to transform both neuroscience and AI. Examples include, but are not limited to:

Foundational frameworks:

• Mathematical frameworks for understanding learning beyond gradient descent in feedback-driven systems
• Computational frameworks for analyzing and interpreting large-scale neuroscience datasets
• Representation/structure learning for causal inference

Brain modeling:

• Bottom-up brain modeling grounded in connectomics and biological plasticity rules
• Development of neurally inspired models of perception or intelligence

Experimental innovations:

• New techniques for measuring and/or manipulating neural circuits at scale
• Human neuroscience experiments to study problem solving
• Novel approaches to understanding the brain’s self-model

Cross-disciplinary integration:

• Cross-disciplinary efforts that link neural mechanisms and machine learning architectures

We are interested in supporting ambitious projects aimed at accelerating progress in life science with clear real-world utility and impact at their core. Examples include, but are not limited to:

• New technologies, workflows, or platforms for generation of multidimensional, information-rich, AI-ready missing data in life science
• Infrastructure, methods and tools to make the lifecycle of research sharing more dynamic, machine-readable, and reusable
• Computational tools to enable data-driven decision-making for what science we do and fund

If your project doesn't fit neatly into the above tracks but feels like a strong fit for Astera's mission, we still want to hear from you.

Astera’s residency offers non-dilutive funding for open projects that may be a one-off public good or a precursor to a future for-profit or non-profit organization. Therefore, ideal residents could look like entrepreneurs, engineers, industry scientists, promising academics, or have other profiles. We also welcome applications from co-founders.

Residents must be able to work onsite in Emeryville, CA, for the duration of their residency.

If you would have applied for this program but for the location restriction, please fill out this form to register interest — we may opt to run a cohort with a remote option in the future.

We expect to make final offers by early June with an August 17, 2026 start date. The application process includes multiple stages, and a smaller set of applicants will advance at each step based on the criteria described on the main residency page.