About FP Launchpad
FP Launchpad is a centre at IIT Madras, founded in January 2026, that builds research and educational capacity for crafting efficient, reliable and trustworthy software with mathematical guardrails. Established with support from Jane Street, the centre focuses on the OCaml programming language and the OxCaml extensions, pursuing work across programming languages, compilers, runtime systems, formal verification, concurrency, security, and AI-augmented software engineering.
The Fellowship
We are accepting applications for our inaugural cohort of 8 Post-Baccalaureate Fellows. Fellows work full-time on ambitious projects: building real systems, publishing at top venues, and contributing to open-source software that people depend on.
You will be mentored by FP Launchpad faculty and interact with advisory board members from Jane Street, Purdue, UC San Diego, Brown, Cambridge, Microsoft Research, and more.
What You Could Work On
- A verifiable voting system on RISC-V hardware and MirageOS unikernels
- Programmable public infrastructure for environmental planning using satellite-derived data
- A formally verified runtime system for O(x)Caml guaranteeing memory safety and correctness
- Formal verification of debugging and observability tools, including eBPF-based tracing
Fellows also have real agency in shaping their research direction — the application asks what you want to build.
Who Should Apply
- Programmers who have built things from scratch, not just followed tutorials
- Strong C/C++ skills; exposure to OCaml, Haskell, Rust, or similar is a plus
- Evidence of building beyond coursework: open-source contributions, personal projects, or hard bugs tracked down
- Comfortable with the expectation to publish at top venues and contribute to real open-source projects
What Comes After
Earn course credits during the fellowship and transition into a degree programme.
Leave with publications, strong recommendations, and research maturity for top programmes globally.
Two years of meaningful open-source contributions that speak directly to the best systems roles.
Leverage IIT Madras's incubation cell and research park to turn research into a product.
Read the full announcement at fplaunchpad.org · Questions? careers@fplaunchpad.org