Blog / Announcements

An announcement shares information about events, opportunities, or general updates from the Topos community.

Our Summer Research Associates in 2026

Summer brings a new group of talented Summer Research Associates (RAs) to Topos. As they begin their projects, we invited each of them to share a little about themselves, their interests, and the work they’ll be pursuing.

Call for 2026 Summer Research Associates

Come spend the summer at the Topos Institute! For early-career researchers, we’re excited to open up applications for our 2026 Summer Research Associate program.

Open position: Director of UK Operations

Topos UK is hiring for a Director of Operations. What does this mean? Read more to find out.

Our Summer Research Associates in 2025

Another year, another cohort of wonderful Summer Research Associates (RAs) at Topos working on exciting projects. As is now the custom, we’ve asked each of them to introduce themselves and write a little bit about what they’ll be working on over the summer, with more detailed blog posts from each…

Growing the Topos tech team

Mathematics and science achieve their greatest impact when innovative basic research is coupled with translation into robust and usable technology. That is easier said than done. Today, research and development, despite appearing conjoined in the acronym “R&D,” are rarely done together. Research…

Inaugural TopOx seminar

Next week we’re co-hosting an in-person seminar talk in Oxford. This post contains the mailing announcement.

Call for 2025 Summer Research Associates

Come spend the summer at the Topos Institute! For early-career researchers, we’re excited to open up applications for our 2025 Summer Research Associate program.

Introducing CatColab

categorical logic

double categories

Today we’re excited to announce the first pre-alpha release of our new software CatColab 0.1: Hummingbird. CatColab is software for making models of the world together.

Postdoc job openings in Topos Oxford, UK

Topos is opening its doors in Oxford, UK, and is inviting applications for two postdoctoral researchers to come work with us on one of our first projects.

Our Summer Research Associates in 2024

Another year, another cohort of wonderful Summer Research Associates (RAs) at Topos working on exciting projects. As is now the custom, we’ve asked each of them to introduce themselves and write a little bit about what they’ll be working on over the summer. You can expect to see some blog posts…

Applied Category Theory for Engineering Design: A Teaser Video

Prof Gioele Zardini will be teaching a new course on Applied Category Theory for Engineering Design (ACT4ED) this Fall. Here’s a teaser video outline the key challenges in engineering systems design we aim to address with applied category theory.

Launching new collaboration with Chapman University

We’ve launched a collaboration with Chapman University to explore joint research projects and expand our role mentoring and teaching the next generation of technologists working in the public interest. Each year, many people reach out to ask how they might pursue doctoral studies with our…

Poly @ Work 2024

polynomial functors

Polynomial functors are a prime example of mathematics’ startling capacity to yield deep formal insights and real-world applications from the simplest ingredients. The category of polynomial functors (Poly) offers an abundance of elegant theory linked with computational design patterns that span…

Sophie Libkind, David Spivak

SCAI — AI for the Global Good

In December 2023, Topos partnered with the Government of Singapore to host the inaugural Singapore Conference on AI for the Global Good (SCAI). An international, cross-sectoral meeting of leaders, SCAI focussed efforts on AI for the global good through the joint writing of 12 foundational yet…

Mathematics for climate change

applied category theory

John Baez is now helping lead a new Fields Institute program on the mathematics of climate change.

Topos researchers win Best Paper Award at AAAI Fall Symposium 2023

Congratulations to Angeline Aguinaldo, Evan Patterson, and their collaborators James Fairbanks, William Regli, and Jaime Ruiz at the University of Florida and the University of Maryland, College Park for winning Best Paper Award at the 2023 AAAI Fall Symposium on Unifying Representations for Robot…

Our Summer Research Associates in 2023

Topos Institute is proud to have ushered in another cohort of research associates (RAs) this summer! Each early career researcher made a positive impact on both the science and culture at Topos, through which their legacies live on. We hope that the collaboration was reciprocal, empowering them to…

Welcoming our new Director of Research, Shaowei Lin

We’re delighted to announce that Shaowei Lin has joined Topos as our new Director of Research.

Singular Learning Theory and Alignment Summit 2023

There are surprisingly deep connections between algebraic geometry and statistical learning theory, which have been explored over the past few decades by Sumio Watanabe in Singular Learning Theory. This body of work is highly relevant to the problem of understanding the behaviour of large…

Category theorists welcome self-learners in a new outreach panel

category theory

We are finding that self learning is becoming more and more popular when it comes to learning category theory. In a collaborative effort to assist people in this pursuit, Topos will host a category theory outreach panel moderated by Emily Riehl, and featuring Tai-Danae Bradley, Eugenia Cheng, Paul…

David Spivak, Alexis Anaya

Women in Logic: the history so far

This year we’re having the 7th Women in Logic (WiL) Workshop in Rome, associated with FSCD and CADE. Considering that we never had grants to help us defray costs of the workshop, I think getting to our seventh anniversary is a big milestone. Everyone who works for Women in Logic does it for free…

Valeria de Paiva

Ask Eugenia Cheng about Category Theory!

category theory

We are excited to announce a book club for The Joy of Abstraction, a new book by Eugenia Cheng. The Joy of Abstraction is a wonderful introduction to category theory for anyone who wants to get into the formality of the subject but does not necessarily have the mathematical background to read…

Research opportunities at Topos in early 2023

We invite applications to join Topos Institute as a Research Associate (summer 2023) or as a Research Software Engineer (regular position).

Statement on Topos and the FTX Foundation

Topos is a community and an organisation that cares deeply about the public interest, and works to make a world of better systems for all. As part of this, we believe accountability and transparency are crucial. This post is to create transparency around our now declined funding relationship with…

JMM Workshop on ACT for teaching and learning

applied category theory

My name is Ted Theodosopoulos and I am a mathematician working at the Nueva School, an independent school for gifted students in San Mateo, California. It was largely as a result of the encouragement that folks at Topos offered me that I decided to propose a workshop on “ACT as a transformative…

Ted Theodosopoulos

In celebration of Dana Scott

The greatest privilege of working at Topos is being part of a community of incredible people. One of these people is Dana Scott. Dana’s research achievements need little introduction: his ideas have changed our understanding of computing and logic, and have been recognised with numerous awards…

Ethics, Technology, and Embracing the 21st Century

Last week our chair Ilyas Khan hosted Lord Rees for a discussion on Ethics, Technology, and Embracing the 21st Century at the Royal Society. The conversation ranged broadly, from the need for public intellectuals; to the limits of science and what we might never know, and the importance of sincere…

What does it take to run a research nonprofit?

We’re exploring a new role at Topos: Director of Research. We’d love to hear from or about anyone who might be interested!

Our Summer Research Associates in 2022

The Topos Institute is pleased to introduce the 2022 cohort of Summer Research Associates! Each of them brings a unique and meaningful perspective to the Topos team, and we consider ourselves lucky to have the opportunity to engage in this important learning and teaching experience. Education is a…

Join Topos as a senior leader in finance and operations!

Topos is more than just a collection of researchers: we are a community pioneering a new, international, and interdisciplinary tech organisation. We do this in order to help create a future where the systems around us, large and small, allow every member of society to flourish. While our…

2022 Workshop on Polynomial Functors

polynomial functors

category theory

This year, Topos sponsored a second workshop on polynomial functors. It consisted of 20 talks, spread out over five days (all of which have been recorded and can be found on our YouTube channel) Like last year, the organizers were myself and my friend and colleague Joachim Kock. Two things made…

Launch of the Women in Logic website

World Logic Day is an international day proclaimed by UNESCO in association with the International Council for Philosophy and Human Sciences (CIPSH) in 2019. The idea is to celebrate it on the 14th of January every year. This year we decided to celebrate Logic Day by launching the Women in Logic…

Valeria de Paiva

So, what’s the plan?

Over the past six months, we’ve conducted interviews across the Topos community, and drafted and re-drafted our 2021–2024 strategic plan, so that we can coordinate effectively around a shared strategy as well as a shared vision. We’d like to share that plan with you all today.

Call for 2022 Summer Research Associates

Come spend the summer at the Topos Institute! For early-career researchers, we’re excited to open up applications for our summer research associate program.

Topos seeks Research Software Engineer

We invite applications to join the Topos Institute as a Research Software Engineer, to work on software for compositional data integration and scientific modeling in the Julia programming language.

Playing with Shapes at Topos

This month sees a new person joining the team here at Topos: we’re thrilled to welcome Brandon Shapiro! He’s working with David Spivak on the theory and applications of polynomial functors. We asked him to write a short blog post introducing both himself and his mathematics.

Brandon Shapiro

Topos Institute seminars in 2022

With a new calendar year comes a new seminar! On the 25th of January, our very own David Spivak will be giving the inaugural talk ("Categorical interaction in the polynomial ecosystem") of the Intercats seminar, and the seminars will then be held every other Tuesday at 17:00 UTC. The Topos…

Topos in 2021: a retrospective

As this calendar year draws to a close, I asked the members of Topos to each write a little bit about what they’ve worked on this year, how things have gone, and what plans they might have for the future. Here’s what they wrote!

We’re looking for a postdoc!

Topos is hiring! We invite applicants for a one-year postdoc position, from November 2021, to work on a project related to dynamical systems and data using the language of polynomial functors.

Announcing Em-Cats

The Em-Cats seminar series that was announced a while back is almost about to start! We will be welcoming our first speaker (Jade Master) on Wednesday the 25th of August. Here is some more information about this opening talk.

Get to know our Summer Research Associates

We’re excited to welcome our 2021 summer research associates to our Berkeley campus! This summer we have Sophie Libkind, Owen Lynch, David Jaz Myers, and Nelson Niu joining our work on connected intelligence and model-based scientific computing. They bring new exciting energy and ideas, and we’re…

Brendan Fong, Sophie Libkind, David Jaz Myers, Owen Lynch, Nelson Niu

Seminars and workshops so far

Although this blog has only just launched, the Topos Institute has been running quite a few public-facing events over the past five months or so, including a workshop and regular seminar series. With even more on the horizon, let’s take a look at what has been, and will be, going on.

Welcome to the Topos Blog

Welcome to the Topos blog! Here you’ll find news and announcements, statements of our visions and projects at Topos, expository articles on topics of interest to the Topos community, and reports of research in progress.