Job Summary

We are seeking a highly talented PhD Student with experience and interest in state-of-the-art AI technologies, data science, and research software engineering. This position offers the opportunity to work in a world-renowned research institute alongside faculty, software engineers, PhD students, and PostDocs on the development of cutting-edge AI-ready/agentic infrastructure for data and model discovery, model metadata extraction, and scholarly intelligence. The project will explore conceptual frameworks and system architecture to support data trust in the context of AI-enabled science workflows.

We are extending and maintaining the National Data Platform to support a new generation of discovery capabilities targeting AI-enabled (agentic) science workflows. Building on ideas pioneered by the Democratizing Data project, this project will explore approaches to discovery data and models that are trusted and fit for use by leveraging contextual information about their use derived from a range of sources including published literature.

The successful candidate will contribute directly to the research and implementation of workflows for AI model identification, publication mining, metadata engineering, search and retrieval, and interactive user-facing systems.

Please contact Jess Tate (jess@sci.utah.edu) for further information.

The SCI Institute

The SCI Institute is a world-class research institute located within the new Warnock Engineering Building on the University of Utah campus. We are a highly dynamic, driven group of over 170 faculty, staff, and students.

Research Focus of This Position

This position centers on the design and development of systems that enable discovery and analysis of AI models used in scientific research publications.

Opportunities for Professional Development

Through the Cyberinfrastructure Professionals (CIP) Cooperative (Co-Op) at the SCI Institute, the successful candidate will access a strong community of research computing and data experts.

Responsibilities

• Work with faculty, staff, and students in designing and developing computational tools in support of research projects.
• Develop user interfaces, APIs with web front-end technologies like HTML5, SCSS, Vue, React, Typescript, D3.js, node.js, chart.js
• Back end server component development with technologies such as Flask, Django, CKAN, ArangoDB, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, and Elasticsearch.
• Create and maintain build, testing, and deployment systems with Git, Github, Slack, Docker, AWS, Circle-CI, webpack, npm and many others.
• Develop high quality and well documented code.
• Mentor postdocs, students, and junior software developers for best software practices.

Minimum Qualifications

Current University of Utah graduate student who is supported on the Tuition Benefit Program.

Preferences

Strongly Preferred Skills: Solid background and working knowledge of computer science fundamentals including algorithms, data structures, and object-oriented programming. PhD in Computer Science, Scientific Computing, Data Science, Informatics, AI/ML, or a closely related area, or equivalent research experience.