MERL is looking for a highly motivated and qualified candidate to work on Bayesian Optimization and predictive control for net-zero energy buildings. The ideal candidate will have a strong understanding of control, optimization, and/or machine learning with expertise demonstrated via, e.g., publications, in at least one of: Bayesian optimization, (stochastic) model predictive control, reinforcement learning, controller tuning; additional understanding of energy systems is a plus. Hands-on programming experience with numerical optimization solvers and Python is preferred. PhD students are strongly preferred, as an expected outcome of the internship is a publication in a high-tier venue. The minimum duration of the internship is 12 weeks; start time is flexible.

MERL is looking for a highly motivated individual to develop planning and control algorithms for multi-agent systems for resource monitoring. The ideal candidate has experience in multi-agent motion planning and data-driven sequential decision-making. The ideal candidate will have published in one or more of these topics: planning over discrete spaces, task scheduling and assignment, vehicle routing and scheduling problems, multi-arm bandits, reinforcement learning, and planning and control of aerial and ground robots. The candidate should have a working knowledge of ROS and Python/C++ since the internship will include validation in various simulation/hardware testbeds at MERL. The minimum duration of the internship is 3 months; the start time is Summer/Fall 2023.

MERL is looking for a self-motivated and qualified candidate to work on human-robot-interaction projects. The ideal candidate is a PhD student and should have experience and records in one or multiple of the following areas. 1) Control, estimation and perception for Robotic manipulation 2) Experience in shared autonomy between robot and humans and intent recognition 3) Learning from demonstration algorithms applied to robotic manipulators 4) Machine learning techniques for modeling and control as well as regression and classification problems. 5) Experience in working with robotic systems and familiarity with one physics engine simulator like Mujoco, pyBullet, pyDrake. The successful candidate will be expected to develop, in collaboration with MERL employees, state of the art algorithms to solve complex manipulation tasks that involve human robot collaboration. Exceptional programming skills are required, including Python and ROS. The expectation is that the research will lead to one or more scientific publications. Typical internship length is 3-4 months.

MERL is looking for a highly motivated and qualified PhD student in the areas of machine learning and robotics, to participate in research on advanced algorithms for learning control of robots and other mechanisms. Solid background and hands-on experience with various machine learning algorithms is expected, and in particular with deep learning algorithms for image processing and object detection. Exposure to deep reinforcement learning and/or learning from demonstration is highly desirable. Familiarity with the use of machine learning algorithms for system identification of mechanical systems would be a plus, along with background in other areas of automatic control. Solid experimental skills and hands-on experience in coding in Python and PyTorch are required for the position. Some familiarity with classical mechanics and computational physics engines would be helpful, but is not required. The position will provide opportunities for exploring fundamental problems in incremental learning in humans and machines, leading to publishable results. The starting date of the internship is flexible, and applications outside of the peak summer season are encouraged, too.

MERL is looking for a highly motivated individual to work on robust, closed-loop control of robotic manipulation system using vision and tactile feedback. The research will develop novel optimization and control techniques that can be used for closed-loop control of manipulation systems. The ideal candidate should have experience in either one or multiple of the following topics: optimization for contact-rich systems, stochastic optimization of non-linear systems, stochastic model-predictive control and reinforcement learning. Senior PhD students in robotics and engineering with a focus on contact-rich manipulation are encouraged to apply. Prior experience working with physical robotic systems (and vision & tactile sensors) is required as results need to be implemented on physical hardware. A successful internship will result in submission of results to peer-reviewed conferences and journals. Good coding skills in Python and state-of-the-art optimization packages like IPOPT, SNOPT, etc. is required. The expected duration of internship is 3-4 months with start date in May/June 2023. This internship is preferred to be onsite at MERL.

MERL is looking for a self-motivated intern to work on roadway maintenance using computer vision. The relevant topics include (but not limited to): road defect localization and classification, detection of key objects in road scenes, and pavement surface evaluation. Candidates with experience in road defect detection and object detection in road scenes are strongly preferred. The ideal candidate would be a PhD student with a strong background in computer vision and machine learning, and the candidate is expected to have published at least one paper in a top-tier computer vision, machine learning, or artificial intelligence venues, such as CVPR, ECCV, ICCV, ICML, ICLR, NeurIPS, or AAAI. Proficiency in Python programming and familiarity in at least one deep learning framework are necessary. The ideal candidate is required to collaborate with MERL researchers to develop algorithms and prepare manuscripts for scientific publications. The duration of the internship is ideally to be at least 3 months with a flexible start date.

MERL is looking for a self-motivated intern to work on problems at the intersection of visual understanding, audio processing, language models, and embodied navigation AI (see our recent NeurIPS 2022 paper for the context). The ideal candidate would be a senior PhD student with a strong background in machine learning and computer vision, as demonstrated by top-tier publications. The candidate must have prior experience in developing deep learning methods for audio-visual-language data. Expertise in popular embodied AI simulation environments as well as a strong background in reinforcement learning will be beneficial. The intern is expected to collaborate with researchers in computer vision and speech teams at MERL to develop algorithms and prepare manuscripts for scientific publications.

MERL is offering a new research internship opportunity in the field of Transfer Learning for Deep RL. The position requires a strong background in Deep RL, excellent programming skills and experience with robotics is preferred. The position is open to graduate students on a PhD track only, and the length of the internship is three months with the possibility of extending if required. The intern is expected to disseminate this research in top tier scientific conferences such as RSS, IROS, ICRA etc., and if applicable, help with filing associated patents. Start and end dates are flexible.

MERL is looking for a self-motivated intern to work on problems at the intersection of computer vision and robotic manipulation for solving tasks such as vision-based robotic tool manipulation. The ideal candidate would be a PhD student with strong mathematical background in machine learning/reinforcement learning, modeling contact-physics for object manipulation, and experience in working with and training deep models on large scale computer vision datasets. Proficiency in PyTorch and (differentiable) robotic simulators is expected. Knowledge of meta-learning, hierarchical RL, self-supervised learning, and scene graph based visual reasoning would be useful. The intern will conduct original research with MERL researchers towards scientific publications.

MERL is seeking an intern to conduct research in the area of multimodal 3D vision using modalities such as RGB images and LIDAR. The focus will be on building novel learning algorithms for core applications like robust object detection and semantic segmentation. A good candidate is a PhD student with experience in deep learning and computer vision with a publication record. Prior knowledge and experience in one or more of the above areas are strongly preferred. Good Python and Pytorch/Tensorflow skills are required. Publication of results in conference proceedings and journals is expected. The expected duration of the internship is 3 months and the start date is flexible.

MERL is seeking an intern to conduct research in the areas of learning symmetries from data and equivariant neural networks for applications in computer vision. The ideal candidate is a PhD student with experience in deep learning and computer vision and a good publication record at top-tier venues. Prior knowledge and experience with group theory/geometry and equivariant neural networks are a big plus. Good Python and Pytorch/Tensorflow skills are required. Publication of results in conference proceedings and journals is expected. The expected duration of the internship is 3 months and the start date is flexible.

We seek a highly motivated intern to conduct original research in conditional diffusion models for computer vision tasks. We are interested in applications to various tasks including image editing, multimodal generation, and image-to-image translation. The successful candidate will collaborate with MERL researchers to design and implement new models, conduct experiments, and prepare results for publication. The candidate should be a PhD student (or postdoc) in computer vision and machine learning with a strong publication record. Strong programming skills, experience developing and implementing new models in deep learning platforms such as PyTorch, and broad knowledge of machine learning and deep learning methods are expected. Previous experience in diffusion models is required.

The Signal Processing (SP) group at MERL is seeking a highly motivated intern to conduct fundamental research in THz (Terahertz) sensing. Expertise in statistical inference, unsupervised anomaly detection, and deep learning (spatial-temporal representation learning) is required. Previous hands-on experience in THz data analysis is a plus. Familiarity with python and deep learning libraries is a must. The intern will collaborate with a small group of MERL researchers to develop novel algorithms, design experiments with collaborators, and prepare results for patents and publication. The expected duration of the internship is 3 months with a flexible start date.

MERL is seeking an intern to work on research for human-machine interface with multi-modal bio-sensors. The ideal candidate is an experienced PhD student or post-graduate researcher having an excellent background in brain-machine interface (BMI), deep learning, mixed reality (XR), remote robot manipulation, and bio sensing. The expected duration of the internship is 3-6 months, with a flexible start date.

MERL is seeking a highly motivated and qualified intern for electric design automation (EDA). The ideal candidate will be expected to carry out research on machine learning for EDA and high-level synthesis (HLS) to improve hardware efficiency of various digital signal processing algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) systems. The candidate is expected to have solid knowledge of deep learning, reinforcement learning, symbolic learning, decision making, graph neural networks, and hands-on experience of HLS, FPGA prototyping, and hardware description language (HDL).

MERL is seeking highly motivated and qualified interns to work on fundamental machine learning techniques for robustness, privacy, and efficiency. The ideal candidates would have significant research experience in one or more of the following topics: robust machine learning methods, defenses against adversarial examples, privacy issues in machine learning, membership inference attacks, federated/distributed learning, and/or efficient/Green AI. A mature understanding of modern machine learning methods, proficiency with Python, and familiarity with deep learning frameworks are expected. Proficiency with other programming languages and software development experience is a plus. Candidates at or beyond the middle of their Ph.D. program are encouraged to apply. Multiple positions are available throughout 2023 (Spring/Summer of course, but also as early as January), with expected durations of 3-6 months and flexible start dates.

MERL is seeking an intern to work on research for quantum machine learning (QML). The ideal candidate is an experienced PhD student or post-graduate researcher having an excellent background in quantum computing, deep learning, and signal processing. Proficient programming skills with PyTorch and PennyLane will be additional assets to this position.

MERL is seeking a highly motivated and qualified intern to work on robust AI for cybersecurity systems. The intern will be expected to conduct research on enhancing the resilience of cybersecurity systems against advanced attacks. The ideal candidate would have significant research experience in the following topics: robust machine learning and anomaly detection, defenses against adversarial examples, and cybersecurity event data processing. A mature understanding of modern machine learning methods, proficiency with Python, and familiarity with deep learning frameworks are expected. Proficiency with other programming languages and software development experience is a plus. Candidates at or beyond the middle of their Ph.D. program are encouraged to apply. This position will be available for Summer/Fall of 2023, with an expected duration of 3 months and flexible start dates.

We are seeking graduate students interested in helping advance the fields of source separation, speech enhancement, robust ASR, and sound event detection/localization in challenging multi-source and far-field scenarios. The interns will collaborate with MERL researchers to derive and implement new models and optimization methods, conduct experiments, and prepare results for publication. The ideal candidates are senior Ph.D. students with experience in some of the following: audio signal processing, microphone array processing, probabilistic modeling, sequence to sequence models, and deep learning techniques, in particular those involving minimal supervision (e.g., unsupervised, weakly-supervised, self-supervised, or few-shot learning). Multiple positions are available throughout 2023 (Spring/Summer of course, but also as early as January), with expected durations of 3-6 months and flexible start dates.

We are looking for a graduate student interested in helping advance the field of multi-modal scene understanding, with a focus on scene understanding using natural language for robot dialog or indoor monitoring. The intern will collaborate with MERL researchers to derive and implement new models and optimization methods, conduct experiments, and prepare results for publication. The ideal candidate would be a senior Ph.D. student with experience in deep learning for audio-visual, signal, and natural language processing. The expected duration of the internship is 3-6 months, and start date is flexible.