AI@HHMI Project Manager

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Research Campus is a pioneering research center in Ashburn, Virginia, where scientists pursue fundamental questions in the life sciences. Our integrated teams of biologists, computational scientists, and tool-builders innovate research practices and technologies to solve biology’s deepest mysteries. HHMI launched Janelia in 2006, establishing an intellectually enriching environment for scientists to do creative, collaborative, hands‑on work.

We share our methods, results, and tools with the scientific community.

This role is for someone who turns plans into completed work through careful follow-through, sound judgment, and the ability to bring others along. You use AI tools to work more efficiently, while bringing the skills and understanding to deliver excellent results independently.

AI@HHMI is HHMI's $500 million initiative to integrate AI into every stage of biological research. It is one of Janelia Research Campus's four scientific areas. It hosts research projects led by scientists at Janelia and across HHMI, with AI Scientists and engineers, a large GPU cluster, and industry partners.

You will support the Head of AI@HHMI in running the program. That means projects, budgets, staffing, recruiting, events, and outreach. You will work daily with leadership, scientists, engineers, and operational staff at Janelia and across HHMI. You will build and use computational workflows, and you will keep a simple process simple.

• Guide projects from approval to closure. Help with proposals, organize reviews and approval decisions, track milestones and end dates, and keep complete records. When a project ends, you close it: coordinate the final report, archive data and code, offboard staff and collaborators, close accounts and contracts
• Keep budget and staffing accurate. Track spending and staffing against each project's budget, work with Finance on the annual budget, and know which positions are open and who is working on what.
• Keep leadership informed and priorities moving. Schedule and prepare briefings, meetings, correspondence, and reports for the Head of AI@HHMI and HHMI leadership, and follow up on open action items
• Understand the science and help the work move forward. Understand the science and computation behind the program and each project well enough to support them competently and talk with computational and experimental scientists as a peer. You do not need to be an AI expert.
• Help us hire, onboard, and offboard. Organize searches for AI Scientists, engineers, and other staff, coordinating with People & Culture throughout the recruiting lifecycle. You will run screening interviews. Get employees, collaborators, and contractors set up with the appropriate resources to do their work and close out accounts and access when they leave.
• Events and outreach. Organize reviews, meetings, seminars, workshops, and visits. Work with HHMI's Digital and Marketing Communication team on the AI@HHMI website, and keep a calendar of conferences, prizes, deadlines, and nominations.
• Handle the paperwork of partnership's. Work with legal, technology transfer, and finance offices on collaborations, industry partnerships, and contracts.
• Leave a trail. Document decisions and project records so someone can find and understand them years later.

• Uses AI tools for real work but can still do it without them. You use agentic AI tools every day for things like screening applications, curating data, and drafting. You can tell us where a tool failed you and how you caught it. Take the tools away and the work is still done, to the same standard.
• Follows every open item. You can hold a long list of open items, know which few matter…