Assistant Research Scientist; PREP

General Description

This position is part of the National Institute of Standards (NIST) Professional Research Experience (PREP) program. NIST recognizes that its research staff may wish to collaborate with researchers at academic institutions on specific projects of mutual interest, thus requires that such institutions must be the recipient of a PREP award. The PREP program requires staff from a wide range of backgrounds to work on scientific research in many areas.

Employees in this position will perform technical work that underpins the scientific research of the collaboration.

Benchmarking Privacy-Enhancing Technologies

This project focuses on benchmarking privacy‑enhancing technologies (PETs) to assess their effectiveness in protecting sensitive information. The candidate will work as part of a team to conduct experiments and write research reports that focus on work from the NIST PETs Testbed, including the Collaborative Research Cycle, which benchmarks synthetic data generators, and the Privacy Red Teaming Exercise for Genomic Federated Learning.

The student will have the opportunity to explore various research topics, such as conducting or analyzing privacy attacks, investigating the statistical properties of input and output data, and implementing and tuning PETs. Projects will be matched with the student’s interests and background.

• Conduct original research under the guidance of senior scientists
• Collaborate with team members to design and execute experiments
• Analyze results and contribute to the writing of research reports
• Implement and tune PETs to assess their effectiveness

• Seeking a graduate degree
• Strong sense of curiosity and strong analytical and problem‑solving skills
• Experience with Python programming is preferred
• An interest in privacy and data protection is preferred
• Familiarity with scientific reading and technical writing

• CV/Resume
• Self‑portraits
• Phone number
• Home address/Country
• Languages spoken

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is committed to equal opportunity for all candidates and employees. NIST does not discriminate on the basis of sex, gender, marital status, pregnancy, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran status, or any other legally protected characteristic.