Program Scientist, Polymaths

Schmidt Sciences is a nonprofit organization founded in 2024 by Eric and Wendy Schmidt that works to accelerate scientific knowledge and breakthroughs with the most promising, advanced tools to support a thriving planet. The organization prioritizes research in areas poised for impact including AI and advanced computing, astrophysics, biosciences, climate, and space—as well as supporting researchers in a variety of disciplines through its science systems program.

Science Systems strengthens the technical and academic systems underlying scientific discovery through the support of people, tools, and technology. Its programs remove specific barriers researchers face, from crossing disciplines at critical career stages to accessing high-quality software and using AI effectively, and increasingly work to scale the practices and institutional models that help ambitious research thrive. The Center's portfolio includes the Schmidt Science Fellows, Schmidt Science Polymaths, the AI in Science Fellowship, the Virtual Institute for Scientific Software, Science Communications, and the Israeli Women's Postdoctoral Award.

Schmidt Science Polymaths supports recently tenured researchers moving into substantively new lines of inquiry. Each Polymath receives $500,000 per year for up to five years, paid through their institution. The award is deliberately flexible, giving researchers room for high-risk, curiosity-driven work that conventional funding rarely reaches.

The program now supports 43 Polymaths at 31 institutions across 9 nations, working in mathematics, computer science, the natural sciences, engineering, and beyond. Its ambition extends past the individual awards, to shift what the wider research ecosystem treats as possible and worth doing by recognizing and backing this kind of intellectual risk.

With its first cohort now completing their awards, the program is entering its next phase, building an alumni community and extending its influence on how the research system supports ambitious work across disciplines.

Reporting to the Director of the Science Systems Center, the Program Scientist will lead the Schmidt Science Polymaths program, including its strategy, selection process, relationships with awardees and their institutions, and growing alumni community.

Impact in this role comes from enabling other people's science. It rewards someone who can read across disciplines, judge whether a researcher is genuinely moving into new research areas, hold candid conversations with mid-career and senior academics about their own work, and build the structures that let a program of this kind demonstrate what it achieves.

This is a hands-on leadership role. The Program Scientist sets direction and also runs the work: overseeing the selection cycle and participating in it, assessing annual reports, meeting Polymaths, shaping mid-cycle and end-of-award reviews, and preparing the analysis and recommendations behind award decisions.

• Develop and propose adjustments and evolutions to the program's strategy and direction, in partnership with the Director of the Science Systems Center.
• Review and refine the selection process each year, including new tools and approaches.
• Develop the program’s convening and community strategy, including the cadence and agendas of convenings and opportunities for engagement across cohorts and with other Schmidt Sciences programs.
• Develop approaches for assessing Polymaths’ progress and program impact.

• Lead the Polymaths program team, setting priorities, running regular team meetings, and coordinating work across selection, award administration, awardee engagement, and convenings.
• Set the cadence and timing of the program’s annual cycle, including selection, awardee start dates, reporting, and check-in meetings.
• Serve as the scientific lead for the annual selection cycle, including reviewing and approving nominating partners, synthesizing reviews at each stage, recommending which candidates advance and which are proposed as awardees, and presenting those recommendations internally.

• Serve as the primary point of contact for Polymaths, leading regular check-ins and supporting them through the course of their awards.
• Identify and recruit external reviewers and advisors for selection, mid-cycle, and end-of-award reviews.
• Review annual reports and prepare analysis and…