Recent years have seen a surge of interest in artificial intelligence (AI) for settings involving multiple interacting decision-makers — whether autonomous AI agents, humans, or a combination of both. Applications include mixed-autonomy vehicles navigating shared road networks, AI agents coordinating in complex games, and human-machine partnerships in online platforms, AI assistants, and physical systems. While multi-agent interactions have been extensively studied in game theory, reinforcement learning, and optimization, their full integration into modern AI systems (particularly in multi-agent deep learning and human-AI collaborative environments) remains an open frontier.

The new MIT Multi-agent AI Postdoctoral Fellowship Program (MAPS) at Schwarzman College of Computing brings together cutting-edge methods in machine learning, reinforcement learning, and computational game theory to address this gap. Fellows will contribute to advancing the next generation of models, algorithms, and system architectures for autonomous systems, multi-agent strategic interactions, and human-AI collaboration and communication.

Program Details & Benefits

Fellows will undertake research in areas such as foundations of multi-agent learning, new solution concepts for multi-agent deep learning and reinforcement learning, algorithms for their efficient computation, and methods for human-AI collaboration and communication.
 
Each fellow will be paired with a faculty mentor whose expertise aligns closely with their research interests in these research areas. Fellow-Mentor matching is a central element of both the application and selection process. In their application, candidates should identify up to three MIT faculty whose work is most closely related to their proposed research.
 
MIT invites outstanding candidates for the 2026-27 fellowship cycle. Applicants must have received their doctoral degree prior to starting the program and must start no later than September 1, 2026, for this program cycle. Each postdoctoral appointment is for 24 months. Fellowships are subject to satisfactory performance, with formal performance reviews conducted annually.
 
Fellows will receive an annual stipend starting at $75,000, plus full MIT benefits. Additional support includes travel grants for presenting at academic conferences, access to high-performance computing resources, and participation in programmatic activities and networking opportunities within MIT’s vibrant AI research community.

Application Requirements

  • One-page research statement
  • CV
  • Two letters of recommendation
  • Additional requested information in the applicant form

Preference will be given to applicants who have not been a student or researcher at MIT in the previous two years.

To receive full consideration, all application materials (including letters of recommendation) must be submitted by December 1, 2025.

Questions? Contact us at scc-postdocs@mit.edu.

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