Carina Initiatives is a philanthropic fund working to send more kids from more communities to the frontiers of science and technology. We see math as fundamental to future innovation; as such, we fund and support organizations that work to inspire, unearth, and train math talent.

We believe that math camps provide transformational experiences that deeply strengthen students' mathematical knowledge and identity. Many of today’s premier mathematicians and scientists point to their participation in math camps as transformative to their mathematical journeys. It is in these immersive programs that they discovered the beauty/joy of mathematics in a tight-knit community of other “mathy” students and decided to pursue careers that push innovation in the STEM fields.

We also believe that artificial intelligence represents the frontier of innovation in our generation and is poised to transform society as we know it. With the advent of AI technology, it is more important than ever to equip students with the core mathematical concepts and applications that lie at the heart of modern AI innovation.

However, summer math camps in the U.S. today are not meeting the needs of the moment. These camps are oversubscribed. Most selective camps receive applications from 2-10x more eligible students than they have space for. And these camps don’t tend to teach mathematical concepts that are key to AI research and development. We want to change that.

We want to support the creation of a large-scale organization running a variety of math camps across multiple geographies for thousands of students per year. These camps will be modeled after the math camps that have propelled students to the frontiers of math/science for decades and teach advanced-level math concepts. While we expect some of these camps to focused on more “traditional” math, some camps will teach concepts and applications fundamental to the modern AI innovation (e.g., the algorithmic backbone of deep learning that combines calculus with linear algebra, vectors and matrices that act as the building blocks of neural networks, logarithmic scales fundamental to the science of neural network training, etc.).

The mission of this organization will be simple: provide thousands of top mathematically talented high school and middle school students in the U.S. with a transformative experience that prepares them to push the frontiers of mathematics and artificial intelligence.