Post-Doctoral Associate

Description

The eBRAIN Lab (https://ebrain4everyone.com) in the Division of Engineering at New York University Abu Dhabi invites applications for a Post-Doctoral Associate position, to work in the area of research and development (R&D) of next-generation Edge-AI and Embodied-AI Systems with tiny-LLMs, tiny-VLMs, tiny-VLAs; Agentic-AI systems; and Robust Generative AI targeting hallucination, safety and security issues. Besides robustness, systems should also be optimized for high performance and energy-efficiency to realized efficient Embodied/Edge-AI implementations. A key focus will be on investigating novel methods with strong theoretical foundations as well as their full-system deployment in real-world applications from different fields (like autonomous systems, healthcare, and robotics) with cross-validation.

Prof. Shafique’s lab has many-years of R&D experience in cross-layer design and optimization for building energy-efficient and robust brain-inspired, autonomous, and cognitive systems and intelligent vision systems, including efficient learning and inference of complex AI/ML algorithms, specialized neural processing hardware and design tools, and ML security, and their applications in resource-constrained Embodied-AI systems (like autonomous vehicles, UAVs/UGVs, Robotics, smart houses/cities, Wearables, and Healthcare). The long-term vision of the eBRAIN lab is on embedding an energy-efficient and secure electronic brain inside modern cyber-physical systems (CPS) and IoT-Edge devices to enable assistive cognitive technologies that care for / serve humanity and the ecosystem in a safe and green way.

The successful applicants will join and drive a number of fascinating projects on designing, implementing, optimizing, prototyping and testing innovative solutions (software, hardware, or both) for the next-generation embodied-AI, GenAI and Agentic-AI systems, targeting high performance & energy-efficiency, robustness, and trustworthiness. A key focus will be on IP generation, patenting, high-quality publications in top-tier ML/AI, Robotics, and Systems conferences, and efficient prototyping for real-world use-cases. The candidates will work in a multidisciplinary environment consisting of PhD-level scientists, research engineers, graduate research students and undergraduate students, to investigate cutting-edge scientific methods and to develop full-system prototypes. The eBRAIN lab offers an excellent working environment with an international team of excellent researchers and engineers, high-tech equipment, and active R&D engagement, thereby providing many development possibilities. The candidates are expected to work in a highly collaborative environment with other lab members and industry collaborators.

Requirements

Applicants should have a PhD in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field. Extensive and sound knowledge of ML, AI, DNN, LLMs/VLMs, Multimodal LLMs, RAG, Agentic frameworks, tinyML, ML frameworks (like PyTorch and Tensorflow), and Prototyping ML systems is required. The candidate should demonstrate a solid experience in practical AI/ML system development. Additional knowledge on MLOps, robust/secure computing, Hallucinations and Alignment, privacy-preserving ML, and ML security is highly desirable. Applicants with strong industrial experience and/or with publications at top/A* ML venues (conferences and journals) are highly preferred. The candidates are also expected to have strong organization, problem-solving, analytical, communication and writing skills as well as high motivation to pursue world-class research and development for practical ML/AI systems.