The ELLIS Institute is proud to announce that Coefficient Giving is supporting our Principal Investigator Maksym Andriushchenko with a grant of $1,000,000 to fund his research on AI safety.
Maksym joined the Institute in September 2025 and is building up the AI Safety and Alignment research group. He is also affiliated with the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and the Tübingen AI Center, where his research benefits from a vibrant community.
Maksym earned his PhD in machine learning from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland in 2024. During the ELLIS UnConference in December 2025, he received the ELLIS Best PhD Award 2025 for his thesis.
His research focuses on the safety and alignment of autonomous LLM agents, which are becoming increasingly capable and pose a variety of emerging risks. Another area Maksym and his group are investigating is rigorous AI evaluations, which are key for informing the public about the risks and capabilities of frontier AI models. These points are crucial for ensuring their steerability and alignment with societal values. The overarching goal of the AI Safety and Alignment group is to reduce risks from general-purpose AI models and make sure AI is deployed safely for our society.
Coefficient Giving is a philanthropic funder and advisor whose mission is to use its resources to help others as much as possible. Coefficient has directed over $4 billion in grants since 2014, supporting projects across 13 philanthropic funds, putting great care into the choice of grantees. Coefficient Giving has been particularly invested in AI safety, systematically supporting research in this area.
Find out more about Maksym’s research.
Find out more about Coefficient Giving.