The grant requires a weekly email report, a monthly public research update, and a monthly call with the grant provider. The grant can be canceled if the reporting and effort are deemed insufficient. The research remains the intellectual property of the grantee. Applicants are expected to spend at least 50% of their working time on research related to the grant. Applications should be sent to not_a_cat@fastmail.com with specific details about the applicant and the proposed research.
Key takeaways:
- The author is launching an experimental research grant, named Cat's grant, where researchers get paid to do their own research and report to the author.
- The grant sizes are $10k, $50k or $100k total, distributed over a period of 10 months. The research remains the intellectual property of the researcher.
- The application process involves an email application, a first screening call, and a second call with more in-depth questions. The deadline to apply is June 9.
- The author is particularly interested in applications in the domains of Machine Learning, Deep Learning and AI, with a preference for topics related to LLMs and Transformer architectures, Mechanistic interpretability, World models, Self play / synthetic data, and Probabilistic programming.