We are excited to announce that Krystal Guo (KdVI, QuSoft) and Ross Kang (KdVI) are principal investigators in a newly awarded grant of 1M USD from the AI for Math Fund. Two other UvA researchers, Jean-Sébastien Caux (IoP, QuSoft) and Jeroen Zuiddam (KdVI, QuSoft), are advisory co-investigators. The AI for Math Fund is administered by the American nonprofit foundation Renaissance Philanthropy in partnership with London-based XTX Markets.
The mathematical community is at a crossroads with the advent of powerful LLM-based capabilities not just for proof generation but also for proof validation.
The two-year project, “CombLib: AI-Aided Formalization in Free Open Access Publishing”, develops scholar-led AI-assisted protocols towards the validation and curation of research in the mathematical subfield of combinatorics. The team will prototype the pairing of an open-source repository and an open-access journal both employing AI-assisted proof verification.
Guo and Kang have both been active in editorship and management for diamond open-access mathematical journals in combinatorics (Combinatorial Theory, Electronic Journal of Combinatorics, Innovations in Graph Theory).
The team is committed to strengthening the principles of community-driven open science and fair open access in a new era impacted by AI-aided mathematical discovery.
The AI for Math Fund was launched in December 2024 to support projects and initiatives that apply AI and machine learning to mathematics. It awarded 17.1M USD in this their second annual round of core grants. CombLib was one of the 22 selected from over 400 proposals submitted. Previous recipients include eminent mathematicians such as Kevin Buzzard, Timothy Gowers and Maryna Viazovska. This is the first grant awarded by the fund to Netherlands-based researchers.
Read more:
Renaissance Philanthropy press release:
Full list of AI for Math Fund 2026 awards:
https://www.renaissancephilanthropy.org/ai-for-math-fund-2026-projects
