Victoriya Krakovna is a doctoral researcher at Harvard University as well as a co-founder of the Future of Life Institute (FLI), an organisation that works on mitigating risks which humanity could face from new technologies. Her own research focuses on the intersection between statistics and machine learning; this complements her desire to improve the world, by allowing her to work on problems related to reducing the risk of catastrophes. She has received numerous awards in mathematics, including a silver medal at the International Mathematical Olympiad and the Elizabeth Lowell Putnam prize. Viktoriya plans to use her skills in the future to work on advancing safety within Artificial Intelligence research at Google, whilst continuing to support the work of FLI.

For Victoriya, improving the world follows naturally from her interest in self-improvement - applying the same skills to something more important than herself. She first learned about effective altruism through an online rationality community called LessWrong and was excited to see other people using rational thinking in order to help others. She already knew that she wanted to use her resources to improve the world, but had been unsure where to start. Finding a community of smart people who are dedicated to making positive changes in the world has helped her to focus on figuring out how she can have an impact.