Graduate Intern – Artificial Learning and Intelligence Transportation Safety and Operations

Graduate Intern – Artificial Learning and Intelligence for Transportation Safety and Operations

Location:

CO - Golden. Position Type:
Intern (Fixed Term). Hours Per Week: 40. Working at NLR NLR is located at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Golden, Colorado is the nation's primary laboratory for energy systems research and development. Join the National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR), where world-class scientists, engineers, and experts are accelerating energy innovation through breakthrough research and systems integration. From our mission to our collaborative culture, NLR stands out in the research community for its commitment to an affordable and secure energy future.

Spanning foundational science to applied systems engineering and analysis, we focus on solving complex challenges to deliver advanced, secure, reliable, and cost-effective energy solutions. Our work helps strengthen U.S. industries, support job creation, and promote national economic growth. At NLR, you'll find a mission-driven environment supported by state-of-the-art facilities, multidisciplinary research teams, and strong collaborations with industry, academia, and other national laboratories.

We offer robust professional development opportunities, and a competitive benefits package designed to support your career and well-being.

Job Description

The Artificial Learning and Intelligent Systems Group in the Computational Science Center at the National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR) has two openings for graduate student researchers to support the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Office of Safety and Operations Research and Development (HRSO R&D) Super Intelligence (SI) Program. FHWA’s HRSO R&D office is building an SI program to improve the safety and efficiency of the nation’s highway system, guided by its SI Roadmap.

Running such a program requires more than research results: the office also needs to track the fast-moving SI landscape, prioritize investments, communicate with stakeholders, and turn research outcomes into practical guidance for transportation agencies. The interns will work with NLR and FHWA colleagues on both sides of this effort: supporting the business of the AI program itself, including roadmap development, portfolio planning, and technical communication, and conducting applied AI research for traffic safety and operations.

We are looking for motivated researchers with strong AI and programming skills, an interest in transportation, and the ability to communicate technical ideas clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences. The successful candidates will collaborate with NLR researchers and FHWA program staff.

Responsibilities include:

Conducting technology and literature scans of emerging AI methods (e.g., large language models, foundation/world models, agentic AI) and summarizing their relevance, maturity, and risks for FHWA.
Develop and evaluate AI and machine-learning models for traffic operations and safety (e.g., traffic flow prediction, speed limit control, cooperative driving automation, detecting, predicting and explaining traffic anomalies such as non-recurrent congestion, and crashes).
Process and integrate multimodal, multisource transportation datasets from disparate sources (e.g., sensor, video, trajectory, and incident data) and validate findings against field data.
Write well-documented Python code and run workflows on NLR’s high-performance computing systems as needed.
Document methodologies and results, and contribute to technical reports, presentations, and publications.
Support the HRSO R&D SI program beyond research, including:
Help organize and characterize the SI program’s project portfolio (e.g., inventories of projects, datasets, models, and outcomes) to…