Job Information
The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York Postdoctoral Research Scientist in New York, New York
Columbia University's Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute brings together world-class scientists across academic disciplines conducting pioneering research to transform our understanding of how the brain works - and gives rise to mind and behavior. The Institute fosters a collaborative and inclusive environment across 50 labs, advancing insights into human health by exploring how the brain develops, performs, endures and recovers.
At the Zuckerman Institute, we are committed to becoming a more inclusive, equitable and diverse place of scientific discovery and support a culture of respect. Promoting diversity in science will that can change the world.
Situated in the Jerome L. Greene Science Center on Columbia's Manhattanville campus, the state-of-the-art building offers an environment where the highest level of scholarly scientific research takes place on a daily basis, with the benefit of being located in the heart of New York, one of the world's most vibrant and culturally rich cities.
The Tavares Lab at the Zuckerman Institute is seeking a Postdoctoral Research Scientist to join a collaborative initiative with the Vondrick Lab in the Department of Computer Science at Columbia University that centers on research at the junction of perception and model discovery. Supported in part by funding from the NSF's AI Institute for Artificial and Natural Intelligence (ARNI), the ideal candidate will be a key contributor to focused efforts to develop systems capable of autonomously discovering casual models by conducting experiments in the physical environment.
Core Responsibilities:
* Research and Development: Lead research in computer vision and AI reasoning. Produce papers, code, and models that align with the goals of the Tavares and Vondrick Labs.
* Model Building: Develop and validate computational models for object recognition and causal reasoning through both simulations and real-world experiments.
* Code Tech Contribution: Contributions to open-source software: Integrate project with existing reasoning technology
* Publication: Prepare findings for top-tier conferences and journals
* Mentorship: Mentor junior team members and graduate students
Ph.D. in Computer Science, Neuroscience, Cognitive Science, or a STEM-related field
We're looking for researchers with the following traits:
* Exceptional Foundations: Deep technical foundations in domains like statistics, programming languages, machine learning, physics, or mathematics. Flexibility in learning concepts from unfamiliar disciplines is essential.
* Areas of Interest: We're particularly interested in expertise in one or more of the following:
o 3D Computer Vision: Learned 3D representations, such as NERF models
o Neural Simulation: Learned simulators and neural surrogate models
o Deep Probabilistic Machine Learning: VAEs, diffusion models, normalizing flows, etc.
o Robotics: Model/simulation-based robotic control
* Research Track Record: Candidates should have a proven research history, demonstrated by publications in recognized venues like CVPR, ICCV, ICML, NeurIPS, UAI, PLDI or through significant technical reports or impactful software projects.
Columbia University is an Equal Opportunity Employer / Disability / Veteran
Pay Transparency Disclosure
The salary of the finalist selected for this role will be set based on a variety of factors, including but not limited to departmental budgets, qualifications, experience, education, licenses, specialty, and training. The above hiring range represents the University's good faith and reasonable estimate of the range of possible compensation at the time of posting.
Equal Opportunity Employer / Disability / Veteran
Columbia University is committed to the hiring of qualified local residents.
Minimum Salary: 31200.00 Maximum Salary: 31200.00 Salary Unit: Yearly