Team

The team behind Iliad’s research incubation, programs, conferences, and fieldbuilding work.

Alexander Gietelink Oldenziel

Alexander Gietelink Oldenziel

Executive Director

Alexander is Iliad's Executive Director, working at the intersection of mathematics and AI alignment. Before founding Iliad, he helped launch Timaeus, Simplex, and the Iliad conference series. He now sets Iliad's research direction and fundraising strategy and oversees its incubated organizations and field-building programs.

Caleb Rak

Caleb Rak

Director of Operations

Caleb is Iliad's Director of Operations and lead organizer of Iliad’s conferences.

David Udell

David Udell

Director of Capacity Building

David is Iliad’s Director of Programs, responsible for managing the Iliad Intensive, Fellowship, and Alignment Journal.

Eddie Jean

Eddie Jean

Chief of Staff

Eddie works across Iliad’s research incubation and field-building programs to keep operations connected and running smoothly. He brings a generalist's background to the role, spanning international relations, behavioral science research, and operations. He holds a Master of Public Policy from the Willy Brandt School.

Louis Jaburi

Louis Jaburi

Chief Scientific Officer

Leading a group focused on compact proofs, red-teaming, mech-interp and basic science of interpretability, and data attribution.

Leon Lang

Leon Lang

Director of Curriculum Development

Leon coordinates the curriculum development and teaching for the Iliad Intensive. His background is in equivariant deep learning, abstract multivariate information theory, and the theory of safe reward learning. He recently completed a PhD at the University of Amsterdam.

Garrett Baker

Garrett Baker

Interim Chief Technology Officer

Garrett is the interim-CTO of Iliad, working on accelerating operations and research, building the research engineering team, and leading the autoformalization & auto-research projects within Iliad. He has a background in applied math, and previously worked on singular learning theory at Timaeus.

Aron Mill

Aron Mill

Outreach Specialist

Aron is bringing an interdisciplinary background and generalist’s strengths to Iliad. After his first academic work on Global Catastrophic Risks he switched into supporting teams wherever needed, recruiting for all departments and organizing team retreats. In parallel, he started to explore and communicate risks from advanced AI in creative ways by building art installations, writing worldbuilds, and co-producing an AI-safety-themed musical. Now he aims to combine the academic, operational, and communications oriented work to Iliad in his role as Outreach Specialist.

Peter Jean

Peter Jean

Operations Generalist

Pete supports Iliad’s finance, onboarding, and general operations. Before joining, he gained commercial and go-to-market experience across multiple industries, building a strong foundation in business operations.

M.G. Scott

M.G. Scott

Operations Generalist

M.G. Scott works on Iliad’s media, content, and fundraising. Her background is in quantum foundations and her essays on physics and metaphysics can be found in various publications, including The Spectator and The Critic.

Lee Wright

Lee Wright

Operations Generalist

Lee supports Iliad's technical operations, communications, and program delivery. His background spans management consulting, enterprise architecture, software development, and operational transformation.

Hyacinth Zia

Hyacinth Zia

Operations Generalist

Hyacinth has a background in neuroscience, with experience in whole-brain emulation, academia, and entrepreneurship. She is excited to bring this interdisciplinary perspective to Iliad. She is interested in AI alignment, frontier technologies, digital minds, and field-building, and enjoys learning from a wide range of perspectives within the alignment community. Her work focuses on capacity-building through the Iliad Fellowship, Iliad Intensive, and the Alignment Journal, helping support researchers and strengthen the field.

Leonard Bereska

Leonard Bereska

Teaching & Delivery Lead, Iliad Intensive

Leonard’s background is physics — he briefly worked in theoretical neuroscience, then completed an AI Safety PhD in mechanistic interpretability. He helped the AI Safety Initiative Amsterdam come to life. He joined the June 2026 Iliad Intensive as a participant, and now wants to make the teaching as good as the content deserves and to find talented participants.

Alexis Stewart

Alexis Stewart

Operations Generalist

Alexis supports Iliad's day-to-day operations across a fast-growing team, helping with organizational structuring and cross-department coordination to keep things running smoothly. His background spans international law and policy, with his Master's research focused on the intersection of law and AI safety.

Wyclif Ogada

Wyclif Ogada

Finance Specialist

Wyclif is a Finance Management Specialist with 14+ years Non-profit organization experience that spans across strategic Finance Leadership and the Technical day-to-day accounting and finance operations. At Iliad he is responsible for building and maintaining a solid financial infrastructure that ensures fiscal discipline and donor compliance.

Zachary Furman

Zachary Furman

Research Lead

Zach is a Research Lead at Iliad, working on training dynamics and singular learning theory. He previously worked at Timaeus, where he co-developed the local learning coefficient and the loss kernel. Before switching to AI safety in 2022, Zach worked on rockets (embedded software, electrical, and aerospace engineering), with a background in mathematics, physics, and computer science.

Daniel Chernowitz

Daniel Chernowitz

Fellowship Research Manager

Daniel is a former quantum physicist, ex-MBB consultant, and was founding data scientist at a startup. He now brings that academic, project management and entrepreneurial acumen to Iliad. He enables fellows to grow and do fundamental research, so the right problems are tackled, and Iliad uncovers the next generation of excellent scholars.

Paolo Pichini

Paolo Pichini

Technical Research Manager

Paolo is a technical research manager at Iliad, focused on supporting fellows throughout the Iliad Fellowship and evaluating their results. He is a theoretical physicist who spent most of his career building interdisciplinary collaborations across math, physics and AI. He is also a proud climate activist committed to social-impact work, and a parkour practitioner.

René Recktenwald

René Recktenwald

Talent Lead

Rene leads the hiring pipeline within Iliad. He is a generalist who holds a PhD in mathematics and has previously worked in data science and finance operations at Effective Ventures.

Arturs Berzins

Arturs Berzins

Research Lead

Arturs is a research lead at Iliad, studying the geometry of neural network loss landscapes and how it shapes the dynamics and outcomes of learning. His investigations often begin with tractable models, most notably ReLU networks.

Daniel Chiang

Daniel Chiang

Research Lead

Daniel is a Research Lead at Iliad. His research area includes information-theoretic abstractions, logical uncertainty, understanding meta-learning and recursive self-improvement, emergence of continuity through probabilistic structures, mechanism design, and safe pareto-improvements. He has a Msc in Applied Mathematics from Imperial College London.