Post Doctoral Fellow - Barnard College : Job Details

If you are a current Barnard College employee, please use the internal career site to apply for this position.Job:Post Doctoral FellowPosition Description:The Accessible and Accelerated Robotics Lab (A²R Lab) at Barnard College, Columbia University is hiring for a postdoctoral research assistant with an ASAP start date to help lead our new NSF funded project: Accessible GPU-Accelerated Edge Optimal Control Library and Benchmarks. This (up-to) 3 year project will be building on our prior work on GPU acceleration of numerical optimal control algorithms in the pursuit of whole body nonlinear model predictive control for locomotion which led to a number of open-source projects and ICRA/RA-L publications including our rigid body dynamics library, GRiD, and our recent trajectory optimization solver, MPCGPU. This research has also been integrated into the PI's Parallel Optimization for Robotics undergraduate course.Our new effort is aimed at turning these proof-of-concept results into full-fledged, open-source software packages and supporting ecosystem for use by the optimal control and robotics communities broadly. This will require algorithmic research to generalize our existing approaches and novel re-designs to maintain performance while supporting broader classes of problems. This software will be paired with open-source benchmark problems and datasets and integrated into machine learning (ML) frameworks to enable fair evaluations of new algorithms and to enable broader participation in this interdisciplinary field. Finally, this project will build on the PIs existing courses and release an open-source integrated educational curriculum that provides background knowledge, enabling researchers and practitioners worldwide to learn about these topics, leverage this cyberinfrastructure to improve their systems, and contribute to the project.Building on the PI's leadership of the IEEE RAS TC on Model Based Optimization for Robotics, we have already secured a number of global collaborators interested in helping co-develop these many efforts. These not only include research collaborations building on past award-winning collaborative work (e.g., TinyMPC), but also through additional grants including a RAS-TEP Grant to run an Optimization for Robotics Summer School in Greece in 2025. As such, this role will place the postdoctoral researcher at the center of the optimization for robotics world.Applications will be reviewed until the position is filled. Application Requirements:PhD, in progress or conferred, in Computer Science or related discipline, required.Please upload a CV, Statement of Interest, along with any other relevant applicant material.Strong preference for C, C++, CUDA experience.Salary: $70,000The salary of the finalist selected for this role will be set based on a variety of factors, including but not limited to departmental budgets, qualifications, experience, education, licenses, specialty, and training. The above hiring range represents the College's good faith and reasonable estimate of the range of possible compensation at the time of posting. Barnard College is an historically women's college in New York City affiliated with Columbia University. We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and are actively committed to creating a diverse and inclusive community. Barnard does not discriminate due to race, color, creed, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender and/or gender identity or expression, marital or parental status, national origin, ethnicity, citizenship status, veteran or military status, age, disability, or any other legally protected basis, and to the extent permitted by law. We encourage applications from women, people of color, persons with disabilities, LGBTQ people, and individuals from other underrepresented groups.Company:Barnard CollegeTime Type:Full time