Innovation Postdoc: Foundation-Model AI for Cellular Imaging

Novartis Group Companies; San Diego (CA); On-site; USD 58,000 - 107,000; Full time

Job summary

Novartis Group of Companies in San Diego seeks a Postdoctoral Research Fellow to advance AI-powered phenotypic drug discovery. You will join the Discovery Sciences Data Science group to develop foundation models for high-content cellular imaging and tackle cutting-edge biomedical challenges.

The program spans up to three years, starting Oct 1, 2026, with opportunities to collaborate across Basel, Cambridge, or San Diego and publish in top ML and biomedical venues.

Qualifications

• PhD conferred in 2026 or later.
• Strong record of scientific achievement (publications, presentations, patents).
• Proficiency in Python and modern DL frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX).
• Experience training models on GPUs and on HPC/cloud infra.

Responsibilities

• Develop vision foundation models for high-content cellular imaging.
• Design evaluation protocols for model generalization across assays and conditions.
• Curate large-scale microscopy datasets and establish data quality standards.
• Extend models to multimodal settings with compound data for drug discovery.
• Build scalable training/inference pipelines on HPC and cloud.
• Publish results and present findings within the organization and external venues.

Skills

Python

Deep learning

GPU training

HPC / cloud

Vision foundation models

Self-supervised learning

Benchmarking

Communication skills

Education

PhD in a relevant field

Tools

PyTorch

TensorFlow

JAX

MLflow

Job description

Novartis Group of Companies in San Diego seeks a Postdoctoral Research Fellow to advance AI-powered phenotypic drug discovery. You will join the Discovery Sciences Data Science group to develop foundation models for high-content cellular imaging and tackle cutting-edge biomedical challenges.

The program spans up to three years, starting Oct 1, 2026, with opportunities to collaborate across Basel, Cambridge, or San Diego and publish in top ML and biomedical venues.