Research Scientist Intern, Robot Foundation Models (PhD)

What you'll do

• Lead an independent research project from problem formulation through robot or high-fidelity simulation evaluation.
• Build policy-training pipelines and multimodal representations for human and robot data; develop dexterous manipulation data pipelines and benchmarks.
• Collaborate with hardware, simulation, controls, and policy researchers and communicate research plans, progress, and results.

What they ask for

• Currently has or is pursuing a Ph.D. in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, or a relevant technical field.
• Experience with Python and PyTorch or JAX, plus familiarity with ROS or comparable robotics middleware.
• Experience training modern control policies, including flow matching, diffusion, imitation learning, reinforcement learning, and large behavior models.
• Must obtain and maintain work authorization in the country of employment; intend to return to the degree program after the internship; available for at least 16 consecutive weeks.

Nice to have

• Hands-on experience with multi-fingered robotic hand manipulation and grippers mounted on a robot arm.
• Experience with motion retargeting, sim-to-real workflows, real-robot demonstrations, multimodal learning, sensor data, or robotics hardware and software systems.

Pay

$7,650/month to $12,667/month (base salary)

Tools

Python, PyTorch, JAX, ROS, flow matching, diffusion

AI focus

Learned robot control and manipulation, including policy learning, multimodal human-to-robot transfer, and dexterous robot foundation models.