Empowering organizations to secure humanity’s future

Ethan oversees software development and S-Process Grant Round operations at SFC. Outside of work, his interests include designing games, writing fiction, playing video games, building Legos, and thinking about philosophy, psychology, AI, civics, history, literature, parenting, and how all of those things are interconnected. Originally from Colorado, Ethan spent several years in Tucson studying Linguistics at the University of Arizona, then spent several more years working as a Software Engineer in the San Francisco Bay Area. He now works remotely and lives in Oregon with his wife and three children, who are all great.

Joel came to SFC because he believes that we’re at an important time in history and he wants it to go well. At work he writes code: OpenLetter.net, the S-Process app, even this website! He lives in Oregon with his wife and daughter. When he’s not at his desk, you can find Joel cooking, reading, pushing a stroller, or playing table tennis.

Julia works as the grants coordinator at SFC, helping facilitate the grant making process and organizing the SFF S-Process Grant Rounds. She graduated from UC Berkeley in 2022 with a bachelor’s degree in Art Practice. Most of her time is spent working in her studio in East Oakland on various sculptural projects, firing kilns, or trying out novelty gummy candy.

Cody manages business operations for SFC and also assists with the grant making process to for-profit organizations. He studied Operations Management and Business Administration at Utah State University and graduated with his bachelor’s degree in 2021. He’s passionate about trying to increase the positive impact that can be made with available resources, which led him to working with SFC. He lives in the Ogden, UT area and spends his free time enjoying what the area has to offer in terms of hiking, skiing, and other nature-focused activities.

Eli is a project lead at Palisade Research, where he briefs policymakers and the public about the AI transition. He’s been professionally focused on reducing x-risk since 2015, including working with CFAR, MIRI, and the Lightcone Infrastructure team as a contractor.

Seán is Director of the AI: Futures and Responsibility research programme at the University of Cambridge, where his work focuses on frontier AI risks and governance. Previously he was founding Executive Director of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at Cambridge, and Academic Manager of the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford. At SFC, Seán advises on AI policy and strategy, and research and philanthropic initiatives.

Andrew Critch is CEO and Co-founder of HealthcareAgents, a company that advocates for early patient access to AI-enhanced healthcare services. Prior to founding HealthcareAgents, he worked as a full-time research scientist at UC Berkeley within CHAI, where he retains a part-time appointment. Andrew also co-founded BERI, where he now volunteers as President, established SFF with the support of Jaan Tallinn, and co-developed the S-Process for philanthropic grant-making. Andrew earned his Ph.D. in mathematics at UC Berkeley studying applications of algebraic geometry to machine learning models. He was offered university faculty and research positions in mathematics, mathematical biosciences, and philosophy, cofounded CFAR and SPARC, worked as an algorithmic stock trader at Jane Street Capital, and worked as a Research Fellow at MIRI. His current research interests include logical uncertainty, open source game theory, "boundary theory", and avoiding arms race dynamics between nations and companies in AI development.

Eric works at CoinList, where he was on a two-person team that launched CoinList Pro, and now leads the team that develops CoinList’s exchange and request-for-quote systems. Previously, he was a founding engineer at EMX, worked as a software engineer at Microsoft and Amazon.com, and was co-founder of Arbital.com, a platform for finding, reading, and creating crowdsourced, intuitive explanations, developed partly in response to the observation that arguments about civilization-scale priorities like existential risk are complex and in need of better organizational tools for conveying them. Eric holds a BSE in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Duke University.