Young Investigator, PRIOR

Who You Are:

Are you passionate about taking artificial intelligence to the next level, to solve problems that require modeling, reasoning, and explanation? We are looking for talented researchers interested in applying their skills towards the next generation of intelligent systems, and pursuing our mission of AI for the common good.

The Young Investigator position:

• Duration: 1-3 years
• Start date: Flexible
• Candidates: Are within one year of completing their PhD, or already have a PhD
• The Allen AI Young Investigator is a postdoctoral program offering unique benefits. The program will enable you to balance working collaboratively on an Ai2 project while pursuing an independent research agenda.

Who We Are:

Ai2's Perceptual Reasoning and Interaction Research team (PRIOR) is looking Young Investigators-strong postdoctoral candidates-to join our team. PRIOR seeks to advance computer vision to create AI systems that see, explore, learn, and reason about the world.

As a research intern in the PRIOR team, you will have the opportunity to work in a variety of research areas including:

• Embodied AI / Robotics - Enable agents that safely navigate, manipulate objects, and follow instructions in simulation and in the real world (w/ real robots).
• Language & Vision - Make vision and language models more general, efficient, and capable.

Agents - Develop multimodal agents that automate real user tasks.

• AI for Common Good - Apply AI to help address global challenges such as climate change, illegal fishing, wildlife poaching, and satellite image time series understanding.
• Open source projects - Make substantial contributions to the tools needed for robust, reproducible, and distributed experimentation (including Allen Act framework for Embodied AI, Ai2-THOR)

We are deeply committed to open science and publishing. We have strong ties to the University of Washington. Young Investigators will also have joint affiliation and collaborations with PhD students at the University of Washington.

Your Next Challenge:

The essential functions include, but are not limited to the following:

• Dedicated Ai2 mentor:
  Mentorship in research, grant writing, and more
• 50% collaborative work on an Ai2 project + UW projects
• 50% work on your own projects

At Ai2, we value the importance of securing a faculty or industry position after your Young Investigator term with us. When looking for your next opportunity, you will not be required to use your accrued Vacation or Personal Time to travel and/or conduct interviews.

What You'll Need:

• Are within one year of completing their PhD, or already have a PhD
• Young Investigator applicants at PRIOR should have a strong foundation (PhD level) in one or more of the research areas listed above.
• We look favorably upon extensive work experience and publishing peer reviewed work at top scientific venues in our field including CVPR, ECCV, ICCV, NeurIPS, etc.
• The Allen AI Young Investigator is a postdoctoral program offering unique benefits. The program will enable you to balance working collaboratively on an Ai2 project while pursuing an independent research agenda.

Physical Demands and Work Environment:

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by a team member to successfully perform the essential functions of this position. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the functions.

• Must be able to remain in a stationary position for long periods of time.
• The ability to communicate information and ideas so others will understand. Must be able to exchange accurate information in these situations.
• The ability to observe details at close range.
• Can work under deadlines.

A Little More About Ai2:

Ai2 is a Seattle based non-profit AI research institute founded in 2014 by the late Paul Allen. Our mission is building breakthrough AI to solve the world's biggest problems. We develop foundational AI research and innovation to deliver real-world impact through large-scale open models, data, robotics, conservation, and beyond.

In addition to Ai2's core mission, we also aim to contribute to humanity through our treatment of each member of the Ai2 Team. Some highlights are:

• We are a learning organization - because everything Ai2 does is ground-breaking, we are learning every day. Similarly, through weekly Ai2 Academy lectures, a wide variety of world-class AI experts as guest speakers, and our commitment to your personal on-going education, Ai2 is a place where you will have opportunities to continue learning alongside your coworkers.
• We value diversity - We seek to hire, support, and promote people from all genders, ethnicities, and all levels of experience regardless of age. We particularly encourage applications from women, non-binary…