Singapore AI Safety Fellowship Opens With S$5,000 Monthly Stipend

Singapore's AI Safety Hub (SASH) has opened applications for its inaugural AI Safety Fellowship, a fully funded three-month residential programme offering selected researchers SGD 5,000 per month in stipends, covered housing and travel, and up to USD 30,000 in compute resources. The fellowship runs from September 21 to December 4, 2026 in Singapore's Chinatown district, with applications closing on July 10.

The programme targets emerging researchers with a background in technical AI safety, governance, or cross-cultural policy translation. Fellows will work full-time on research projects under mentors from top-tier institutions including the National University of Singapore, Tsinghua University, Fudan University, Anthropic, FAR.AI, the Oxford Martin AI Governance Initiative, and Concordia AI. Notable mentors include Tan Zhi Xuan and Mohan Kankanhalli (Director of NUS AI Institute) from NUS, Dong Yinpeng from Tsinghua, and Soren Mindermann—Scientific Lead of the 2025 International AI Safety Report—from Oxford.

The research will cover four focus areas: technical AI safety (making advanced systems more secure), agent governance (models for autonomous AI agents), preventing loss of control over advanced systems, and policy translation—converting technical research into actionable institutional recommendations. The fellowship is explicitly designed to bridge researchers across Eastern and Western institutions, leveraging Singapore's position as a neutral hub for international AI collaboration. Information sessions in English and Mandarin are scheduled for July 1 and 2 respectively.

This comes as Singapore continues to position itself as a global leader in AI governance—a theme reinforced by recent IMDA-Microsoft partnerships on AI safety research and Singapore's broader push for responsible AI development. The fellowship's involvement of Anthropic, FAR.AI, and top Chinese universities underscores Singapore's unique convening power across geopolitical lines in AI research.

Why it matters for Singapore: The AI Safety Fellowship adds a concrete talent-development pillar to Singapore's AI safety ecosystem. Beyond the IMDA and industry partnerships that focus on corporate governance, this programme targets the research pipeline itself—attracting global emerging talent to Singapore, building a cohort of safety-conscious researchers who can shape AI policy, and strengthening the city-state's reputation as a serious player in technical AI safety, not just AI adoption.