Associate Research Scientist; PREP

General Description

PREP Research Associate

This position is part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Professional Research Experience Program (PREP). NIST recognizes that its research staff may want to collaborate with researchers at academic institutions on specific projects of mutual interest and, therefore, requires those institutions to be recipients of a PREP award. The PREP program involves staff from a wide range of backgrounds conducting scientific research across various fields.

Individuals in this position will perform technical work supporting the collaboration's scientific research.

Evaluation of search, natural language processing, multimedia, and generative information systems.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST) Information Technology Laboratory is seeking a qualified candidate to support the Text Retrieval Conference (TREC, trec.nist.gov). TREC evaluates AI technologies in information retrieval (IR), search, natural language processing, and multimedia search, creating human-labeled data to measure effectiveness. TREC hosts annual evaluations & workshops, releasing datasets and research papers upon completion. The candidate for this position will work alongside world-class researchers at NIST

U.S. Citizen Preferred

• Develop software for topic creation, relevance assessment, and generative output annotation.
• Develop scoring software for evaluation outputs.
• Develop and maintain systems used to register, submit outputs, and see evaluation results.
• Conduct research on evaluating information access systems, including but are not limited to:
  • Automating the evaluation of AI-generated outputs.
  • Leveraging human insight and expertise with AI support for data annotation and evaluation.
  • Designing metrics for AI-generated outputs in information-seeking contexts.
  • Interfaces for annotating data that support consistency and identify errors.
  • Quality control processes for data annotation.
  • Leader board designs that support cooperative research instead of competition.

• A PhD degree in Computer Science.
• 5+ years of relevant experience.
• Experience building systems with large language models as components.
• Familiarity with Docker and Git.
• Experience with Python, JavaScript, and web frameworks such as React and Django.
• Ability to develop prototypes of tools needed to analyze data.
• Strong oral and written communication skills.

• Experience in conducting large-scale IR & multimedia retrieval evaluations.
• Experience with Elastic Search, Pyserini, or Terrier (open-source IR research platforms).

Please upload the following with your application:

• CV/Resume
• Self portraits
• Phone number
• Home address/Country
• Citizenship status
• Languages spoken
• Sex/Gender

Please limit C.V to 3 pages only and ONLY include a valid email address for your contact info. Your resume will not be considered if the following information is included on your CV/resume.

Authority: 15 U.S.C. § 278g-1(e)(1) and (e)(3) and 15 U.S.C. § 272(b) and (c)

Purpose: The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) hosts the Professional Research Experience Program (PREP) which is designed to provide valuable laboratory experience and financial assistance to undergraduates, post-bachelor's degree holders, graduate students, master's degree holders, postdocs, and faculty.

PREP is a 5-year cooperative agreement between NIST laboratories and participating PREP Universities to establish a collaborative research relationship between NIST and U.S. institutions of higher education in the following disciplines including (but may not be limited to) biochemistry, biological sciences, chemistry, computer science, engineering, electronics, materials science, mathematics, nanoscale science, neutron science, physical science, physics, and statistics. This collection of information is needed to facilitate administrative functions of the PREP Program.

Routine Uses: NIST will use the information collected to perform the requisite reviews of the applications to determine eligibility, and to meet programmatic requirements. Disclosure of this information is also subject to all the published routine uses as identified in the Privacy Act System of Records Notices: NIST-1: NIST Associates.

Disclosure: Furnishing this information is voluntary. When you submit the form, you are indicating your voluntary consent for NIST to use of the information you submit for the purpose stated.