PhD Student in AI research

University of Utah; Salt Lake City (UT); On-site; USD 36,000 - 48,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible working hours

Professional career development

Collaboration with research team

Access to computing infrastructure

Job summary

The SCI Institute at the University of Utah seeks a PhD student to develop AI-ready scholarly discovery platforms, model discovery, and evidence linking across papers, models, and resources. You will work with faculty, software engineers, and researchers to deploy production-grade research software and infrastructure.

You will contribute to data trust, model publication mining, and interactive user-facing systems, with opportunities for mentorship, teaching, and interdisciplinary collaboration.

Qualifications

• Current University of Utah graduate student on Tuition Benefit Program.
• Strong background in CS fundamentals including algorithms, data structures, and OO programming.
• Experience with HTML and web technologies; server and database knowledge.

Responsibilities

• Design and develop computational tools to support research projects.
• Develop UI/UX, APIs with front-end technologies (HTML5, SCSS, Vue, React, TypeScript, D3.js).
• Back-end development with Flask, Django, CKAN, ArangoDB, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, Elasticsearch.

Skills

Algorithms

Data structures

Object-oriented programming

HTML & web tech

Linux toolchains

Docker

GitHub Actions

Education

PhD in Computer Science or related

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

ArangoDB

PostgreSQL

MongoDB

Elasticsearch

Job description

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, a. This position offers the opportunity to work in a world-renowned research institute alongside faculty, software engineers, PhD students, and PostDocs on the development of cutting-edge AI-ready/agentic infrastructure for data and model discovery, model metadata extraction, and scholarly intelligence. The project will explore conceptual frameworks and system architecture to support data trust in the context of AI-enabled sience workflows. Experience and developing and deploying software is desired.

We are extending and maintaining the National Data Platform to support a new generation of discovery capabilities targeting AI-enabled (agentic) science workflows. Building on ideas pioneered by the Democratizing Data 1 2 project ( insights.ndp.utah.edu ), this project will explore approaches to discovery data and models that are trusted and fit for use by leveraging contextual information about their use derived from a range of sources including published literature. The approach includes extracting, linking, and presenting evidence from records to help users understand where models are used, how they are applied, what tasks they support, and how they evolve across scientific domains.

The successful candidate will contribute directly to the research and implementation of workflows for AI model identification, publication mining, metadata engineering, search and retrieval, and interactive user-facing systems. The role includes support for integration, development, deployment, maintenance, UI/UX, containerization, automation, and system-level optimization.

Please contact Jess Tate ([e-mail]) for further information.

The SCI Institute

The SCI Institute is a world-class research institute located within the new Warnock Engineering Building on the University of Utah campus. We are a highly dynamic, driven group of over 170 faculty, staff, and students. The overarching goals of the SCI Institute's scientific computing research are to create new techniques, tools, and systems, by which scientists may solve problems affecting various aspects of human life. We believe that to advance the state-of-the-art and create meaningful computational solutions for such complex systems, one needs to advance research in a number of areas within scientific computing, including: visualization, simulation, and modeling. The SCI Institute presents a highly challenging, collaborative work environment that can be deeply rewarding for the right individual. Further information is available at http://www.sci.utah.edu/.

Research Focus of This Position

This position centers on the design and development of systems that enable discovery and analysis of AI models used in scientific research publications. Rather than cataloging datasets cited by papers, this effort focuses on identifying and organizing information about:

• AI models mentioned or used in publications
• model families, versions, checkpoints, and architectures
• tasks and scientific domains in which models are applied
• evidence of reuse, benchmarking, fine-tuning, and comparison
• links among papers, models, repositories, benchmarks, and supporting resources
• search, ranking, and visualization interfaces for model-centric scholarly exploration

This work sits at the intersection of AI/NLP, scholarly knowledge extraction, software engineering, data infrastructure, and human-centered discovery systems.

Opportunities for Professional Development

Role

Through the Cyberinfrastructure Professionals (CIP) Cooperative (Co-Op) at the SCI Institute, the successful candidate will access a strong community of research computing and data experts working together to support and sustain SCI's world-class research efforts. SCI's CIPs perform a wide range of advanced services that positively impact research outcomes, improve researcher productivity, and strengthen the growing SCI research enterprise. The Co-Op provides faculty and research staff with a stable environment for mentoring, growth, training, communication, and planning across diverse research projects. This role offers exceptional opportunities to:

• 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

Work Environment

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

We Offer

• 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

Responsibilities

• Work with faculty, staff, and students in designing and developing computational tools in support of research projects.
• Aid in the specification of software requirements in coordination with faculty or team leads.
• Develop user interfaces, APIs with web front-end technologies like HTML5, SCSS, Vue, React, Typescript, D3.js, node.js, chart.js
• Back end server component development with technologies such as Flask, Django, CKAN, ArangoDB, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis, and Elasticsearch.
• Create and maintain build, testing, and deployment systems with Git, Github, Slack, Docker, AWS, Circle-CI, webpack, npm and many others.
• Develop high quality and 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 posted on the discussion list, 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

Minimum Qualifications

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

Strongly Preferred Skills

• 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.
• Working with large codebases
• Containerization (Docker) and building software for web deployment
• Strong understanding of Linux toolchains and debugging tools
• Debugging and critical thinking skills including identifying bottlenecks, and bugs and devising solutions to these problems.
• Experience with GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or similar CI/CD systems
• PhD in Computer Science, Scientific Computing, Data Science, Informatics, AI/ML, or a closely related area, or equivalent research experience.

Preferred Skills And Experience

• Experience contributing to scientific computing frameworks
• Knowledge of RDMA, libfabric, or similar low-level communication APIs
• MCP and NLP integration
• UI/UX design
• Scientific visualization
• CyberSecurity and AAI (OAuth2, Keycloak, etc)
• Cloud deployment and Kubernetes

Non-Technical Skills

• Able to work in a collaborative software development environment as well as working independently with minimal supervision and direction.
• Able to learn new tools and technologies.
• Being self-motivated and having good organizational, communication, and teamwork skills is essential.
• Willingness and ability to collaborate in a highly diverse, multi-disciplinary environment.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills necessary to effectively work in a multidisciplinary team environment.
• Communication and presentation skills to engage technical and non-technical audiences.
• Strong interpersonal abilities and teamwork skills.
• Highly motivated to support research projects.
• Ability to manage time across simultaneous tasks.

Note: This job description is not designed to contain or be interpreted as a comprehensive inventory of all duties, responsibilities and qualifications required of employees assigned to the job.

Special Instructions

Requisition Number: PRN45460B

Full Time or Part Time?: Full Time

Work Schedule Summary: This position is expected to attend meetings and be otherwise communicating during standard business hours

Department: 00810 - Scient Comp & Imag Instit-Oper

Location: Campus

Pay Rate Range: per TBP guidelines

Close Date: 09/24/2026

Open Until Filled