Our work began in 2022, when we set out to scope where India's AI safety talent was and how to reach it: an eight-month survey across 80+ campuses that seeded the in-house research lab that became SAFL. In 2023, we founded India's first Alignment Research Fellowship, drawing 600+ applicants, and ran the country's first in-person AI safety careers fellowship at IIT Delhi.
From 2024 onward we deepened the technical work by nurturing young talent through fellowships with multiple A* tier conference publications and contributing dangerous-capability evaluations to the UK AI Security Institute, while also building talent infrastructure that maps 68,200+ ML researchers from public signals. In 2025 we built and ran the Global AI Safety Fellowship, placing researchers at labs including the Anthropic Fellowship, FAR.AI, and Apollo Research.
SAFL was founded in September 2025. Envisioned as a research lab and capacity-building organisation for the Middle powers, we convene government, academia, and industry: most recently running our Hardware-Rooted Sovereignty Workshop at the India AI Impact Summit 2026 while continuing our research, fellowships, and field-building across India and South Asia.
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Jayat co-founded the Secure AI Futures Lab (SAFL) and served as Program Lead (India) at SteadRise. Previously, he helped develop and led technical AI safety research programs like the Global AI Safety Fellowship. He previously worked at the Indian Political Economy Program at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and graduated with an Integrated Master's in Development Studies from IIT Madras.
Varun co-founded the Secure AI Futures Lab (SAFL) and served as the Co-CEO and Head of Talent at SteadRise. He has over 10+ years of experience in designing and running high impact programs, operations and impact evaluation, talent and hiring management and economics research at institutions like the World Bank and J-PAL South Asia.
Basil works on technical AI governance at the Secure AI Futures Lab (SAFL) as a Member of Technical Staff. He helped build scalable data pipelines for SteadRise and contributed to various flagship programs. Basil holds a Master's degree in Computer Science from IIT Delhi.
Sai works on technical AI governance at the Secure AI Futures Lab (SAFL) as a Member of Technical Staff. He led engineering at SteadRise, where he was involved with the Global AI Safety Fellowship, and served as an external collaborator on dangerous capability evaluations at the UK AI Security Institute. Sai holds a Master's in Computer Science from CMI and worked as a Software Engineer at Microsoft.
Amiya is a Project Associate at Secure AI Futures Lab (SAFL), where she's worked across cross-functional program execution from academic research mapping and policy analysis to community strategy and events. She has a Bachelor's in Economics from Hindu College, University of Delhi and a Master's in Trade and Finance from IIFT, New Delhi.