Associates

The people and organisations that make VALO possible.

Research associates, industry partners, advisors, and collaborators. VALO Research Group operates at the intersection of formal verification, AI safety, industrial deployment, and regulatory compliance — no single person or team has all the expertise required.

Founder
Njål Gaute Solland
Founder & Principal Researcher
Njål Gaute Solland
Senior AI Architect · VALO Research Group

Author of The Eukaryotic Transition in Artificial Intelligence, Φ — Den neste setningen, and Spes Phthisica Digitalis. Inventor of the Law of Identity Maintenance (LIM) and builder of VAIG — the Validation AI Guard.

The founding incident: an AI system nearly killed a patient. Caught only because the doctor had reference books. VALO started there — not as a philosophical project but as an engineering response to a real failure mode.

Background in industrial AI deployment, formal verification, and EU regulatory compliance. Based in Stavanger, Norway. Working across energy, finance, healthcare, and defence sectors.

njaal@valoresearch.org
Research associates

Independent researchers working on related problems.

Research Associate
Andrew Woodward
AI Scientist · Project Black Box LLC

Author of TAV_ONE — geometric stability measurement system for AI outputs. Measures the L-scalar of the token probability field. Building TruthForge: a model where fabricated confidence is structurally not produced.

Project Black Box LLC
AI Governance · NLP
Independent Advisor
Authority Instrumentation™ Creator

Independent advisor in AI governance and NLP. Creator of Authority Instrumentation™ — a governance framework for instrumenting authority, accountability, delegation, and human intervention across AI ecosystems. PhD, Université Paris VII (LADL). Research focus: designing governance mechanisms that ensure consequential AI actions remain legitimate, governable, and accountable at the point of execution.

Université Paris VII · LADL
Formal Verification
Open position
TLA+ Specialist · Formal Methods

VALO is seeking a research associate with expertise in TLA+ formal verification and distributed systems. The VALO V5 TLA+ specification covers 2.85M states; the L1 Guardian covers 4.78M states.

Express interest
AI Safety
Open position
AI Safety Researcher · Red-teaming & Adversarial

VALO is seeking a research associate with expertise in adversarial AI, red-teaming, and safety evaluation. Focus areas: PLASMA regime adversarial inputs, memory poisoning detection, multi-agent attack surface characterization.

Express interest
Industry associates

Organisations working with VALO in production contexts.

Pilot Partner
Cegal

Norwegian energy technology company. Active VAIG pilot partner — first production deployment of the VAIG admissibility gate in an energy sector context. Q2/Q3 2026 pilot. Evaluating VAIG as a governance layer for AI-assisted operational decision support.

Public Research
NHN — Norsk Helsenett

Norwegian Health Network. Conversation ongoing regarding VAIG deployment in clinical AI contexts — specifically diagnostic support systems under EU AI Act Annex III high-risk classification. Contact: Ola Stenseth.

Regulatory Context
DNV (Det Norske Veritas)

Classification society. Ongoing dialogue regarding VAIG as a technical measure for class-approved AI governance documentation in maritime and offshore contexts. SHA-256 WORM audit log as the basis for auditable AI decisions.

Advisory

Seeking advisors in key domains.

VALO Research Group is actively recruiting advisors with deep expertise in EU AI regulatory compliance, insurance/reinsurance, and sovereign compute infrastructure.

Advisory position
EU Regulatory Specialist
EU AI Act · PLD 2024/2853 · GDPR

VALO needs an advisor with deep knowledge of EU AI Act implementation, Product Liability Directive 2024/2853, and GDPR Article 22 (automated decision-making). Expertise in translating regulatory requirements into technical specifications.

Apply
Advisory position
Insurance / Reinsurance
AI Risk · D&O · Actuarial

VALO needs an advisor from the insurance market — ideally with underwriting experience in D&O, technology liability, or cyber, and awareness of the AI governance gap in current policy wording. The reinsurance tail-risk pricing problem is central to VALO's market thesis.

Apply
Advisory position
Sovereign Compute Infrastructure
Norwegian / Nordic data centres

VALO deploys on Norwegian sovereign compute — outside Big Tech infrastructure, Norwegian jurisdiction, GDPR-compliant by architecture. Seeking an advisor with operational knowledge of Nordic data centre infrastructure, preferably NetZero Compute or equivalent.

Apply

Become an associate

Research associate, industry partner, or advisor — if you're working on problems that overlap with VALO's mission, we want to hear from you.

Get in touch
Tofoo. Φ VALO Research Group · valoresearch.org