Assistant Research Scientist; PREP

Salary: $75,000

Job Title: PREP Research Associate

Description: This position is part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Professional Research Experience Program (PREP). The role involves supporting scientific collaboration between NIST and an academic institution on digital watermarking technologies.

Developing an Evaluation Framework for Digital Watermarking Technologies

This project focuses on developing a study on digital watermarking technologies. The associate will explore how watermarking techniques are used to protect digital content and the challenges in evaluating their robustness, imperceptibility, and effectiveness. The goal is to build foundational understanding and draft an initial evaluation strategy supporting broader work at NIST in digital content integrity.

U.S. Citizen Preferred

• Conduct a literature survey on state‑of‑the‑art watermarking techniques (image, video, audio, and document‑based).
• Familiarize with existing watermarking tools and open‑source implementations.
• Understand NIST’s role and ongoing efforts in digital content protection and 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 (with proposed metrics and methodology).
• Prototype implementation or scripts for transformation and detection scenarios.

• Background in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or related field.
• Postgraduate education; at least a Master’s degree (or currently pursuing).
• Strong interest in digital media security, cryptography, or multimedia processing.
• Experience with Python, MATLAB, or image/audio processing tools is preferred.
• Familiarity with scientific reading and technical writing.
• Strong oral and written communication skills.

Johns Hopkins offers a total rewards package that supports employees’ health, life, career, and retirement.

The Johns Hopkins University is committed to equal opportunity for its faculty, staff, and students and does not discriminate on the basis of sex, gender, marital status, pregnancy, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran status or other legally protected characteristic.

All successful candidates will be subject to a pre‑employment background check including education verification.

Johns Hopkins University strongly encourages the COVID‑19 vaccine but no longer requires it, except for certain positions within the School of Medicine. A seasonal flu vaccine is required for all faculty, staff, and students.