Assistant Research Scientist; PREP

PREP Research Associate

This position is part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Professional Research Experience Program (PREP). NIST requires collaborating academic institutions to be recipients of a PREP award, enabling research staff to work on projects of mutual interest. The role focuses on providing technical support for a collaboration that explores digital watermarking technologies.

Developing an Evaluation Framework for Digital Watermarking Technologies

• Conduct a literature survey on state‑of‑the‑art watermarking techniques for images, videos, audio, and documents.
• Familiarize with existing watermarking tools and open‑source implementations.
• Understand NIST’s role in digital content protection and relevant cryptographic standards.
• Propose evaluation metrics, transformation pipelines (stress‑testing such as compression, cropping, rotation, noise, etc.), and potential testbeds for watermark robustness testing.
• Draft a preliminary evaluation plan or roadmap that could guide future benchmarking activities.

• Annotated bibliography of key watermarking research.
• Summary report of explored tools and their features.
• Draft evaluation framework document (proposed metrics and methodology).
• Prototype implementation or scripts for transformation and detection scenarios.

• Background in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field.
• Postgraduate education (master’s or PhD) or master’s candidate.
• Strong interest in digital media security, cryptography, or multimedia processing.
• Experience with Python, MATLAB, or image/audio processing tools preferred.
• Familiarity with scientific reading and technical writing.
• Strong oral and written communication skills.
• U.S. citizen preferred.

The salary range for this position is based on Johns Hopkins University’s good faith estimate at the time of posting. Compensation may vary depending on location, experience, and other factors.

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