PhD Student in AI research

Graduate Research Assist (RA)

PhD Student in AI research at the University of Utah.

We are seeking a highly talented PhD Student with experience and interest in state‑of‑the‑art AI technologies, data science, and research software engineering. This position offers the opportunity to work in a world‑renowned research institute alongside faculty, software engineers, PhD students, and Post Docs on the development of cutting‑edge AI‑ready/agentic infrastructure for data and model discovery.

• Design and develop systems that enable discovery and analysis of AI models used in scientific research publications.
• Identify and organize information about AI models mentioned or used in publications, model families, versions, checkpoints, architectures, tasks, scientific domains, and evidence of reuse, benchmarking, fine‑tuning, and comparison.
• Link papers, models, repositories, benchmarks, and supporting resources, and provide search, ranking, and visualization interfaces for model‑centric scholarly exploration.
• Work at the intersection of AI/NLP, scholarly knowledge extraction, software engineering, data infrastructure, and human‑centered discovery systems.

• Contribute to high‑impact interdisciplinary research.
• Publish and present work in relevant venues.
• Collaborate with experts in AI, data systems, and scientific computing.
• Gain hands‑on experience with production‑grade research software and infrastructure.
• Mentor students and junior developers.
• Shape the future of AI‑ready scholarly discovery platforms.

You will contribute to cutting‑edge computational methods for AI‑ready model discovery, research knowledge extraction, and scientific search systems.

• Flexible working hours.
• Professional career development opportunities.
• Collaboration with a multidisciplinary and research‑driven team.
• Access to strong computing and research infrastructure.
• A competitive benefits package through the University of Utah.

• Work with faculty, staff, and students to design and develop computational tools in support of research projects.
• Assist in specifying software requirements in coordination with faculty or team leads.
• Develop user interfaces, APIs, and front‑end technologies such as HTML5, SCSS, Vue, React, Typescript, D3.js, node.js, chart.js.
• Develop backend server components with Flask, Django, CKAN, ArangoDB, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, and Elasticsearch.
• Create and maintain build, testing, and deployment systems with Git, Git Hub, Slack, Docker, AWS, CircleCI, Webpack, npm, and related tools.
• Write high‑quality, well‑documented code.
• Build CI/CD workflows to validate changes across multiple targets.
• Profile and optimize performance for data throughput and latency.
• Interface with collaboration partners and participate actively in a collaborative work environment to turn requirements into optimal solutions on a large scale.
• Contribute actively to team discussions on architectural design and solutions by continuously looking for improvements.
• Research and stay current with project‑related scientific literature.
• Identify and implement creative solutions to overcome problems.
• Mentor postdocs, students, and junior software developers for best software practices.
• Support the end‑user community by responding to user questions, fixing bugs, and incorporating feature requests.
• Help with the project website and discussion boards for user support, developer support, and announcements.
• Contribute to teaching activities by preparing and presenting educational seminars.

Current University of Utah graduate student supported on the Tuition Benefit Program.

• Solid background and working knowledge of computer science fundamentals including algorithms, data structures, and object‑oriented programming.
• Experience with HTML and web technologies.
• Good knowledge of server technology and databases.
• Experience working with large codebases.
• Containerization (Docker) and building software for web deployment.
• Strong understanding of Linux tool chains and debugging tools.
• Debugging and critical‑thinking skills, including identifying…