Work > Community building

Systems technologies affect everyone. How can we ensure everyone has a voice in their construction?

Topos believes that science is best conducted as an inclusive, public enterprise. Our initiatives include:

• Partnering with the Government of Singapore to organise the Singapore Conference on AI for the Global Good.
• Partnering with leading science communicator Eugenia Cheng to organise discussions on category theory outreach, improve the quality of research talks, and coordinate an online bookclub for the public to learn advanced mathematics.
• Partnering with Mozilla to democratise use of AlgebraicJulia.

Topos also assists with the administration of the following community projects, which support our values of open science, inclusivity and diversity, and public engagement:

• The nLab: a research wiki for collaborative work on Mathematics, Physics and Philosophy, with a sympathy towards the tools of category theory.
• The Adjoint School: an annual research school in applied category theory, which aims to welcome new researchers into the applied category theory community and help them develop their research skills.
• Women in Logic: a forum that brings together women conducting research in logic and closely related areas, with the goals of enhancing the experience of women in these communities, making their achievements known, and increasing the number of women in logic.
• The International Conference on Applied Category Theory: an annual conference bringing researchers in the field of applied category theory together to disseminate the latest results and facilitate further development of the field.

Topos Summer Research Program

The Topos Summer Research Program offers early career researchers a chance to work under the mentorship of Topos-affiliated experts.

Summer Research Associates are resident in our Berkeley Office, and receive a stipend for the summer. The goal of the program to help build a diverse community of researchers capable of producing and following outstanding interdisciplinary research.

Projects are selected collaboratively between research associates and Topos mentors, with the aim of finding the best way for the research associate to contribute to the Topos mission. Research areas explored in the program include mathematics, especially category theory and mathematical logic; programming language theory and software systems; and philosophy, especially ethics of science and technology.

Previous projects include David Jaz Myers’ book on Categorical Systems Theory, Nelson Niu’s course on Polynomial Functors, and Alejandra Arciniegas’ work on strategies for ethically oriented pursuit of research and technology. For more information on previous cohorts and their projects, see here.