Basis

Basis is a nonprofit applied research organization with a mission to understand and build intelligence while advancing society’s ability to solve intractable problems. The organization is developing a new technological foundation inspired by human reasoning and is committed to creating a collaborative environment that prioritizes human values. Basis focuses on representing and discovering models of world phenomena with unprecedented fidelity and scale, leveraging ideas from programming languages, compilers, and databases to uncover fundamental principles of reasoning. Basis regularly publishes technical results at leading venues like ICML, NeurIPS, and PLDI, and its primary research medium is a unified, growing body of open-source software.

Basis has developed several tools and languages for causal reasoning, including ChiRho, Omega, and SBI, as well as probabilistic machine learning tools like Pyro and NumPyro. The organization has also contributed to computational neuroscience and cognitive science projects such as successor representation learning and Autumn. One of its notable projects involves building a digital representation of a city that incorporates existing knowledge in a participatory manner. Additionally, Basis is developing software tools for understanding and reasoning about collaborative intelligent systems and systems that build models of real and simulated environments for intuitive scientific discovery. It aims to learn dynamical models of cell or tissue multi-omic state by integrating various kinds of incomplete causal knowledge.

Basis sponsors postdoctoral fellowships for early-career scientists, offering a unique research experience that integrates the advantages of both academic and industry environments. These fellowships are time-limited, spanning 1 to 2 years. Basis actively solicits researchers in core technical areas and domain experts from academia, government, the social sector, and industry. The organization’s structure allows employees to see their autonomy and responsibilities grow with their projects. Basis seeks individuals excited to contribute to its technical mission and collaborate with a broad community while shipping high-quality open-source software.