Jacob Tsimerman, a University of Toronto mathematician who won the 2026 Fields Medal for his work on the Andre-Oort conjecture, announced he will take leave from the university to join OpenAI’s AI safety team in San Francisco. He becomes only the second Canadian to win the prize, mathematics’ highest honor. Tsimerman has previously co-authored research on catastrophic “omnicidal” AI risk scenarios and says he views AI safety, rather than capabilities work, as “the most important question of our time.”
