Come spend the summer at the Topos Institute! For early-career researchers, we’re excited to open up applications for our summer research associate (RA) program.

Summer RAs are an important part of life at Topos – they help explore new directions relevant to Topos projects, and they bring new ideas, energy, and expertise to our research groups. This year we will welcome four RAs to our offices in Berkeley, CA, with the program running from June to August.

RAs will be responsible for performing an in-depth research or teaching project, mentored by a Topos faculty mentor or advisor. This year possible mentors may include Conal Elliott, Valeria de Paiva, Evan Patterson, Dana Scott, David Spivak, and others. RAs will work closely with their mentor to define and pursue a research project.

Along the way, RAs will also participate in our weekly lunches and seminars, blog about their time here, and produce papers, books, software, or policy, according to the parameters of their project.

To get a taste of possible projects, check out the projects from last summer’s program:

• Sophie Libkind extended the AlgebraicDynamics package for operadic modeling of dynamical systems with features to support epidemiology modeling, such as delay differential equations. This work will be described in a forthcoming research article.

• Owen Lynch significantly refactored the implementation of categorical databases in Catlab, a core component of that package. He also started a project on compositional thermostatics with John Baez, which he continues to work on for his master’s thesis.

• David Jaz Myers wrote most of a book called Categorical Systems Theory about various paradigms of composition—those that show up in previous work by Baez and separately Spivak—and generalizing various known theorems.

• Nelson Niu and David Spivak worked on a book called Polynomial Functors: A General Theory of Interaction about a highly-structured category called Poly, and how its structure relates to that of dynamical systems. It should be finished by this summer.

Topics for this year’s program may include:

• Projects in applied category theory, logic, or programming language theory

• Projects in ethics of technology research, with a specific focus on potential implications for internal practices at Topos 

• Specific topics, such as:

• Polynomial functors

• Computational category theory using AlgebraicJulia

• Geometry of interaction

As part of our commitment to building a world where the systems that surround us benefit us all, we particularly encourage applications from those whose life experiences may be underrepresented in the Topos community – your perspectives are important, and we want them to be heard at Topos. 

Applications are now open. The position is full-time (~40 hours per week) and paid hourly starting at $30/hour. To apply, please fill out this application form by Sunday March 27th. Offers of positions will be made in early April.