Young Investigator, PRIOR

Persons in these roles are expected to work from our offices in Seattle. On‑site requirements vary based on position and team. If you have questions about on‑site work arrangements for this role, please ask your recruiter.

Compensation range: $159,650

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.

• Duration: 1–3 years
• Start date: Flexible
• Candidates: 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.

Ai2's Perceptual Reasoning and Interaction Research team (PRIOR) is looking for 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 (with real robots).
• Language & Vision – Make vision and language models more general, efficient, and capable.

• 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.

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.

• Within one year of completing a PhD, or already have a PhD.
• Strong foundation (PhD level) in one or more research areas listed above.
• Extensive work experience and publishing peer‑reviewed work at top scientific venues such as 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.

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.
• Must be able to communicate information and ideas so others will understand. Must be able to exchange accurate information in these situations.
• Must be able to observe details at close range.
• Can work under deadlines.

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.

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