Young Investigator, Robotics

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: $159,650 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 Robotics team is led by Dieter Fox. We aim to develop and leverage scalable simulation domains to scientifically investigate the scaling and generalization capabilities of foundation models for robotics, and use these insights to develop broadly competent robots. Following a longstanding tradition at Ai2, we are committed to fully open-source research and work toward application domains with a positive impact on society. We are looking for applicants interested in robotics, with a focus on core techniques in robot manipulation, large scale training in simulated environments, sim-to-real transfer, robot foundation models, and skill learning. As a Predoctoral Young Investigator on the Robotics team, you will have the opportunity to work in a variety of research areas including: Robot foundation models – Investigate the scaling and generalization properties of foundation models for robotics, and contribute to developing broadly competent robots that can operate in the real world. Manipulation and skill learning – Develop agents that manipulate objects, follow instructions, and acquire new skills across diverse tasks, in both simulation and on real robot hardware. Simulation and sim-to-real – Build and leverage scalable, GPU-accelerated simulation environments for large-scale training, and develop pipelines that transfer learned policies reliably to real-world robots. Open source research – Make substantial contributions to the fully open methods, datasets, benchmarks, and tools that enable rigorous, reproducible, and distributed experimentation. We regularly publish in high-profile conferences and journals in robotics (CoRL, ICRA, RSS), computer vision (CVPR, ICCV, ECCV), and machine learning (e.g., NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML). We collaborate frequently with researchers on other Ai2 teams focused on computer vision, large language models, and others. Our main office has close ties and unique access to researchers at the University of Washington, only 1.5 miles away. 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. What You’ll Need: Are within one year of completing their PhD, or already have a PhD. Young Investigator applicants 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 RSS, CoRL, ICRA, NeurIPS, CVPR, ECCV, ICCV, 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: W