Location San Diego

Description

At Qualcomm, we are transforming the automotive industry with our Snapdragon Digital Chassis and building the next generation software defined vehicle (SDV).

Snapdragon Ride is an integral pillar of our Snapdragon Digital Chassis, and since its launch it has gained momentum with a growing number of global automakers and Tier1 suppliers. Snapdragon Ride aims to address the complexity of autonomous driving and ADAS by leveraging its high-performance, power-efficient SoC, industry-leading artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and pioneering vision and drive policy stack to deliver a comprehensive, cost and energy efficient systems solution.

Enabling safe, comfortable, and affordable autonomous driving includes solving some of the most demanding and challenging technological problems. From centimeter-level localization to multimodal sensor perception, sensor fusion, behavior prediction, maneuver planning, and trajectory planning and control, each one of these functions introduces its own unique challenges to solve, verify, test, and deploy on the road.

We are looking for smart, innovative and motivated individuals with strong theory background in deep learning, advanced signal processing, probability & algorithms and good implementation skills in python/C++. Job responsibilities include design and development of novel algorithms for solving complex problems related to behavior prediction for autonomous driving, including trajectory and intention prediction. Develop novel deep learning models to predict trajectories for road users and optimize them to run-in real-time systems. Work closely with sensor fusion and planning team on defining requirements and KPIs. Work closely with test engineers to develop test plans for validating performance in simulations and real-world testing.

Minimum Qualifications: • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or related field and 6+ years of Systems Engineering or related work experience. OR Master's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or related field and 5+ years of Systems Engineering or related work experience. OR PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or related field and 4+ years of Systems Engineering or related work experience.Preferred Qualifications: Ph.D + 2 years industry experience in behavior and trajectory prediction Proficient in variety of deep learning models like CNN, Transformer, RNN, LSTM, VAE, GraphCNN etc Experience working with NLP Deep Learning Networks Proficient in state of the art in machine learning tools (pytorch, tensor flow) 3+ years of experience with Programming Language such as C, C++, Python, etc. 3+ years Systems Engineering, or related work experience in the area of behavior and trajectory prediction. Experience working with, modifying, and creating advanced algorithms Analytical and scientific mindset, with the ability to solve complex problems. Experience in Autonomous driving, Robotics, XR/AR/VR Experience with robust software design for safety-critical systems Excellent written and verbal communication skills, ability to work with a cross-functional team

ASML US, including its affiliates and subsidiaries, bring together the most creative minds in science and technology to develop lithography machines that are key to producing faster, cheaper, more energy-efficient microchips. We design, develop, integrate, market and service these advanced machines, which enable our customers - the world’s leading chipmakers - to reduce the size and increase the functionality of their microchips, which in turn leads to smaller, more powerful consumer electronics. Our headquarters are in Veldhoven, Netherlands and we have 18 office locations around the United States including main offices in Chandler, Arizona, San Jose and San Diego, California, Wilton, Connecticut, and Hillsboro, Oregon.

The Advanced Development Center at ASML in Wilton, Connecticut is seeking an Optical Data Analyst with expertise processing of images for metrology process development of ultra-high precision optics and ceramics. The Advanced Development Center (ADC) is a multi-disciplinary group of engineers and scientists focused on developing learning loop solutions, proto-typing of next generation wafer and reticle clamping systems and industrialization of proto-types that meet the system performance requirements.

Role and Responsibilities The main job function is to develop image processing, data analysis and machine learning algorithm and software to aid in development of wafer and reticle clamping systems to solve challenging engineering problems associated with achieving nanometer (nm) scale precision. You will be part of the larger Development and Engineering (DE) sector – where the design and engineering of ASML products happens.

As an Optical Data Analyst, you will: Develop/improve image processing algorithm to extract nm level information from scientific imaging equipment (e.g. interferometer, SEM, AFM, etc.) Integrate algorithms into image processing software package for analysis and process development cycles for engineering and manufacturing users Maintain version controlled software package for multiple product generations Perform software testing to identify application, algorithm and software bugs Validate/verify/regression/unit test software to ensure it meets the business and technical requirements Use machine learning models to predict trends and behaviors relating to lifetime and manufacturing improvements of the product Execute a plan of analysis, software and systems, to mitigate product and process risk and prevent software performance issues Collaborate with the design team in software analysis tool development to find solutions to difficult technical problems in an efficient manner Work with database structures and utilize capabilities Write software scripts to search, analyze and plot data from database Support query code to interrogate data for manufacturing and engineering needs Support image analysis on data and derive conclusions Travel (up to 10%) to Europe, Asia and within the US can be expected

Vancouver

Who we are Established in 2017, Wayve is a leader in autonomous vehicle technology, driven by breakthroughs in Embodied AI. Our intelligent, mapless, and hardware-agnostic technologies empower vehicles to navigate complex environments effortlessly.

Supported by prominent investors, Wayve is advancing the transition from assisted to fully automated driving, making transportation safer, more efficient, and universally accessible. Join our world-class, multinational team of engineers and researchers as we push the boundaries of frontier AI and autonomous driving, creating impactful technologies and products on a global scale

Where you will have an impact Science is the team that is advancing our end-to-end autonomous driving research. The team’s mission is to accelerate our journey to AV2.0 and ensure the future success of Wayve by incubating and investing in new ideas that have the potential to become game-changing technological advances for the company.

As the first Research Manager in our Vancouver office, you will be responsible for managing & scaling a strong Science team in collaboration with other Wayve science teams in London and Mountain View. You will provide coaching and guidance to each of the researchers and engineers within your team and work with leaders across the company to ensure sustainable career growth for your team during a period of growth in the company. You will participate in our project-based operating model where your focus will be unlocking the potential of your team and its technical leaders to drive industry-leading impact. As part of your work, you will help identify the right projects to invest in, ensure the right allocation of resources to those projects, keep the team in good health, provide technical feedback to your team, share progress to build momentum, and build alignment and strong collaboration across the wider Science organisation. We are actively hiring and aim to substantially grow our research team over the next two years and you will be at the heart of this.

Challenges you will own Work closely with team members to develop career plans and growth trajectories based on each individual’s strengths and weaknesses and their own aspirations. Work closely with project leads to ensure team members are having strong impact and are set up for success. Work closely with project leads and Science leadership to ensure projects are resourced in a way that balances the needs of the business with the needs of the individuals. Offer coaching and technical mentorship to direct reports (especially project leads). Bring technical & project management expertise and experience to help accelerate our progress and decision-making. Challenge the status quo (both technical and organisational/process). Prioritize effectively and keep processes lean and effective. Partner with leadership to maintain a culture of cross-boundary collaboration, impact, innovation, and health. Grow the team as a hiring manager, to bring in complementary, diverse skill sets and backgrounds. Anticipate the needs of the business 6-24 months out, identify areas where additional resources are needed or we need to grow new domain expertise, and pitch this to leadership for investment. Contribute to the day-to-day running of the Science team’s operations and larger collaborative efforts.

Natick, MA, United States

The Company Cognex is a global leader in the exciting and growing field of machine vision.

The Team: Vision Algorithms, Advanced Vision Technology This position is in the Vision Algorithms Team of Advanced Vision Technology group, which is responsible for designing and developing the most sophisticated machine vision tools in the world. We combine custom hardware, specialized lighting, optics, and world-class vision algorithms to create software systems that are used to analyze imagery (intensity, color, density, Z-data, ID barcodes, etc.), to detect, identify and localize objects, to make measurements, to inspect for defects, and to read encoded data. Technology development is critical to the overall business to expand areas of application, improve performance, discover new algorithms, and to make use of new hardware and processing power. Engineers in this group typically have experience with image analysis, machine vision, or signal processing.

Job Summary: The Vision Algorithms team is looking for well-rounded, intelligent, creative, and motivated summer or fall intern with a passion for results! You will work with our senior engineers and technical leads on projects that advance our software development infrastructure and enhance our key technologies and customer experience. You will get mentorship on tackling technical challenges and opportunities to build a solid foundation for your career in Software Engineering, or Computer Vision and Artificial Intelligence.

Essential Functions: - Prototype and develop Vision (2D and ID) applications on top of Cognex products and technology. - Build internal tools or automated tests that can be used in software development or testing. - Understand our products and contribute to creating optimal solutions for customer applications in the automation industry. - High energy and motivated learner. Creative, motivated, and looking to work hard for a fast-moving company. - Strong analytical and problem-solving skills. - Strong programming skills in both C/C++ and Python are required. - Solid understanding of machine learning (ML) fundamentals and experience with ML frameworks like TensorFlow or PyTorch required. - Demonstrated projects or internships in AI/ML domain during academic or professional tenure is highly desirable. - Experience with embedded systems, Linux systems, vision/image-processing and optics all valued. - Background in 2D vision, 3D camera calibration & multi camera systems are preferred.

Minimum education and work experience required: Pursuing a MS, or Ph.D. from a top engineering school in EE, CS, or equivalent.

If you would like to meet the hiring manager at CVPR to discuss this opportunity, please email ahmed.elbarkouky@cognex.com

Location San Diego

Description

Artificial Intelligence is changing the world for the benefit of human beings and societies. QUALCOMM, as the world's leading mobile computing platform provider, is committed to enable the wide deployment of intelligent solutions on all possible devices – like smart phones, autonomous vehicles, robotics and IOT devices. Qualcomm is creating building blocks for the intelligent edge.

We are part of Qualcomm AI Research, and we focus on advancing Edge AI machine learning technology – including model fine tuning, hardware acceleration, model quantization, model compression, network architecture search (NAS), edge inference and related fields. Come join us on this exciting journey. In this particular role, you will work in a dynamic research environment, be part of a multi-disciplinary team of researchers and software engineers who work with cutting edge AI frameworks and tools. You will architect, design, develop, test, and deploy on- and off-device benchmarking workflows for model zoos.

Minimum Qualifications: • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related field and 4+ years of Hardware Engineering, Software Engineering, Systems Engineering, or related work experience. OR Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related field and 3+ years of Hardware Engineering, Software Engineering, Systems Engineering, or related work experience. OR PhD in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related field and 2+ years of Hardware Engineering, Software Engineering, Systems Engineering, or related work experience.The successful applicant should have a strong theoretical background and proven hands-on experience with AI as modern software-, web-, and cloud-engineering.

Must have experience and skills: Strong theoretical background in AI and general ML techniques Proven hands-on experience with model training, inference, and evaluation. Proven hands-on experience with PyTorch, ONNX, TensorFlow, CUDA, and others. Experience developing data pipelines for ML/AI training and inferencing in the cloud. Prior experience in deploying containerized (web-) applications to IAAS environments such as AWS (preferred), Azure or GCP, backed by Dev-Ops and CI/CD technologies. Strong Linux command line skills. Strong experience with Docker and Git. Strong general analytical and debugging skills. Prior experience working in agile environments. Prior experience in collaborating with multi-disciplinary teams across time zones. Strong team player, communicator, presenter, mentor, and teacher. Preferred extra experience and skills: Prior experience with model quantization, profiling and running models on edge devices. Prior experience in developing full stack web applications using frameworks such as Ruby-on-Rails (preferred), Django, Phoenix/Elixir, Spring, Node.js or others. Knowledge of relational database design and optimization, hands on experience with running Postgres (preferred), MySQL or other relational databases in production Preferred qualifications: Bachelor's, Master's and/or PhD degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related field and 2-5 years of work experience in Software Engineering, Systems Engineering, Hardware Engineering or related.

San Jose, CA

B GARAGE was founded in 2017 by a Ph.D. graduate from Stanford University. After having spent over five years researching robotics, computer vision, aeronautics, and drone autonomy, the founder and team set their minds on building a future where aerial robots would become an integral part of our daily lives without anyone necessarily piloting them. Together, our common goal is to redefine the user experience of drones and to expand the horizon for the use of drones.

Roles and Responsibilities

Design and develop perception for aerial robot and inventory recognition for warehouses by leveraging computer vision and deep learning techniques

Aid the computer vision team to deliver prototype and product in a timely manner

Collaborate with other teams within the company

Minimum Qualifications

M.S. degree in computer science, robotics, electrical engineering, or other engineering disciplines

10+ years of experience with computer vision and machine learning

Proficient in image processing algorithms and multiple view geometry using camera

Experience with machine learning architectures for object detection, segmentation, text recognition etc.

Proficient with ROS, C++, and Python

Experience with popular computer vision and GPU frameworks/libraries (e.g., OpenCV,TensorFlow, PyTorch, CUDA, cuDNN etc.)

Proficient in containerization technologies (Docker, Kubernetes) and container orchestration technologies

Experience in cloud computing platforms (AWS, GCP, etc.)

Experience with robots operating on real-time onboard processing

Self-motivated person who thrives in a fast-paced environment

Good problem solving and troubleshooting skills

Legally authorized to work in the United States

Optional Qualifications

Ph.D. degree in computer science, robotics, electrical engineering, or other engineering disciplines

Experience with scene reconstruction, bundle adjustment and factor graph optimization libraries

Experience with Javascript and massively parallel cloud computing technologies involving Kafka, Spark, MapReduce

Published research papers in CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, ICRA, IROS, etc.

Company Benefits

Competitive compensation packages

Medical, dental, vision, life insurance, and 401(k)

Flexible vacation and paid holidays

Complimentary lunches and snacks

Professional development reimbursement (online courses, conference, exhibit, etc.)

B GARAGE stands for an open and respectful corporate culture because we believe diversity helps us to find new perspectives.

B GARAGE ensures that all our members have equal opportunities – regardless of age, ethnic origin and nationality, gender and gender identity, physical and mental abilities, religion and belief, sexual orientation, and social background. We always ensure diversity right from the recruitment stage and therefore make hiring decisions based on a candidate’s actual competencies, qualifications, and business needs at the point of the time.

London

Who we are Established in 2017, Wayve is a leader in autonomous vehicle technology, driven by breakthroughs in Embodied AI. Our intelligent, mapless, and hardware-agnostic technologies empower vehicles to navigate complex environments effortlessly.

Supported by prominent investors, Wayve is advancing the transition from assisted to fully automated driving, making transportation safer, more efficient, and universally accessible. Join our world-class, multinational team of engineers and researchers as we push the boundaries of frontier AI and autonomous driving, creating impactful technologies and products on a global scale

Where you will have an impact We're looking for an experienced Applied Scientist with expertise in Neural Radiance Fields (NeRFs) and Gaussian Splatting to join our Vision & Graphics team and advance our innovative neural simulator, Ghost Gym. This role is central to improving Ghost Gym's capabilities, utilizing state-of-the-art neural rendering techniques to craft photorealistic 4D worlds. You'll be at the forefront of developing and applying groundbreaking research to generate thousands of simulated scenarios. These scenarios are critical for training, testing, and debugging our end-to-end AI driving models, contributing significantly to the creation of safe and reliable AI driving technology. Your work will focus on improving the efficiency, realism, and dynamism of our simulations, especially for dynamic and outdoor environments, pushing the limits of current photorealistic visualization technologies.

Challenges you will own Conducting cutting-edge research in NeRFs, Gaussian splatting, and related technologies, with a focus on solving real-world challenges in 3D rendering Developing and implementing algorithms for efficient, high-quality 3D scene reconstruction and rendering, particularly for dynamic and outdoor environments Collaborating with cross-functional teams to integrate research findings into scalable, production-level solutions Staying abreast of the latest developments in the field, evaluating and incorporating state-of-the-art techniques into our workflows Potentially finding opportunities to publish research findings in top-tier journals and conferences, contributing to the scientific community and establishing Wayve as a leader in the field What you will bring to Wayve Essential Proven track record of research in NeRFs, Gaussian splatting, or closely related areas, demonstrated through publications or deployed applications Strong programming skills in Python with experience in deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch Solid foundation in mathematics and physics underlying 3D graphics and rendering techniques Excellent problem-solving skills and the ability to work independently as well as in a team environment Demonstrated ability to work collaboratively in a fast-paced, innovative, interdisciplinary team environment

Desirable Experience with dynamic scene reconstruction and rendering, particularly in outdoor environments Familiarity with parallel computing, GPU programming, and optimization techniques PhD or MSc in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field, with a focus on computer graphics, computer vision, or machine learning What we offer you The chance to be part of a truly mission driven organisation and an opportunity to shape the future of autonomous driving. Unlike our competitors, Wayve is still relatively small and nimble, giving you the chance to make a huge impact Competitive compensation and benefits A dynamic and fast-paced work environment in which you will grow every day - learning on the job, from the brightest minds in our space, and with support for more formal learning opportunities too A culture that is ego-free, respectful and welcoming (of you and your dog) - we even eat lunch together every day

The Perception team at Zoox is responsible for developing the eyes and ears of our self driving car. Navigating safely and competently in the world requires us to detect, classify, track and understand several different attributes of all the objects around us that we might interact with, all in real time and with very high precision.

As a member of the Perception team at Zoox, you will be responsible for developing and improving state of the art machine learning techniques for doing everything from 2D/3D object detection, panoptic segmentation, tracking, to attribute classification. You will be working not just with our team of talented engineers and researchers in perception, but cross functionally with several teams including sensors, prediction and planning, and you will have access to the best sensor data in the world and an incredible infrastructure for testing and validating your algorithms.

ASML US, including its affiliates and subsidiaries, bring together the most creative minds in science and technology to develop lithography machines that are key to producing faster, cheaper, more energy-efficient microchips. We design, develop, integrate, market and service these advanced machines, which enable our customers - the world’s leading chipmakers - to reduce the size and increase the functionality of their microchips, which in turn leads to smaller, more powerful consumer electronics. Our headquarters are in Veldhoven, Netherlands and we have 18 office locations around the United States including main offices in Chandler, Arizona, San Jose and San Diego, California, Wilton, Connecticut, and Hillsboro, Oregon.

ASML’s Optical Sensing (Wafer Alignment Sensor and YieldStar) department in Wilton, Connecticut is seeking a Design Engineer to support and develop complex optical/photonic sensor systems used within ASML’s photolithography tools. These systems typically include light sources, detectors, optical/electro-optical components, fiber optics, electronics and signal processing software functioning in close collaboration with the rest of the lithography system. As a design engineer, you will design, develop, build and integrate optical sensor systems.

Role and Responsibilities Use general Physics, Optics, Software knowledge and an understanding of the sensor systems and tools to develop optical alignment sensors in lithography machines Have hands-on sills of building optical systems (e.g. imaging, testing, alignment, detector system, etc.) Have strong data analysis sills to evaluate sensor performance and troubleshooting Leadership:

Lead executing activities for determining problem root cause, execute complex tests, gather data and effectively communicate results on different levels of abstraction (from technical colleagues to high level managers) Lead engineers in various competencies (e.g. software, electronics, equipment engineering, manufacturing engineering, etc.) in support of feature delivery for alignment sensors Problem Solving: Troubleshooting complex technical problems Develop/debug data signal processing algorithms Develop and execute test plans in order to determine problem root cause Communications/Teamwork: Draw conclusions based on the input from different stakeholders Capability to clearly communicate the information on different level of abstraction Programming: Implement data analysis techniques into functioning MATLAB codes Optimization skills GUI building experience Familiarly with LabView and Python Some travel (up to 10%) to Europe, Asia and within the US can be expected

Location Multiple Locations

Description The Qualcomm Cloud Computing team is developing hardware and software for Machine Learning solutions spanning the data center, edge, infrastructure, automotive market. Qualcomm’s Cloud AI 100 accelerators are currently deployed at AWS / Cirrascale Cloud and at several large organizations. We are rapidly expanding our ML hardware and software solutions for large scale deployments and are hiring across many disciplines.

We are seeing to hire for multiple machine learning positions in the Qualcomm Cloud team. In this role, you will work with Qualcomm's partners to develop and deploy best in class ML applications (CV, NLP, GenAI, LLMs etc) based on popular frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow and ONNX, that are optimized for Qualcomm's Cloud AI accelerators. The work will include model assessment of throughput, latency and accuracy, model profiling and optimization, end-to-end application pipeline development, integration with customer frameworks and libraries and responsibility for customer documentation, training, and demos. This candidate must possess excellent communication, leadership, interpersonal and organizational skills, and analytical skills.

This role will interact with individuals of all levels and requires an experienced, dedicated professional to effectively collaborate with internal and external stakeholders. The ideal candidate has either developed or deployed deep learning models on popular ML frameworks. If you have a strong appetite for technology and enjoy working in small, agile, empowered teams solving complex problems within a high energy, oftentimes chaotic environment then this is the role for you.

Minimum Qualifications: • Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Information Systems, Computer Science, or related field and 4+ years of Software Applications Engineering, Software Development experience, or related work experience. OR Master's degree in Engineering, Information Systems, Computer Science, or related field and 3+ years of Software Applications Engineering, Software Development experience, or related work experience. OR PhD in Engineering, Information Systems, Computer Science, or related field and 2+ years of Software Applications Engineering, Software Development experience, or related work experience.

• 2+ years of experience with Programming Language such as C, C++, Java, Python, etc. • 1+ year of experience with debugging techniques.Key Responsibilities: Key contributor to Qualcomm’s Cloud AI GitHub repo and developer documentation. Work with developers in large organizations to Onboard them on Qualcomm’s Cloud AI ML stack improve and optimize their Deep Learning models on Qualcomm AI 100 deploy their applications at scale Collaborate and interact with internal teams to analyze and optimize training and inference for deep learning. Work on Triton, ExecuTorch, Inductor, TorchDynamo to build abstraction layers for inference accelerator. Optimize LLM/GenAI workloads for both scale-up (multi-SoC) and scale-out (multi-card) systems. Partner with product management, hardware/software engineering to highlight customer progress, gaps in product features etc.

※Location※ South Korea Seoul / Pangyo

※Description※ 1) Deep learning compression and optimization - Development of algorithms for compression and optimization of deep learning networks - Perform deep learning network embedding (requires understanding of HW platform)

2) AD vision recognition SW - Development of deep learning recognition technology based on sensors such as cameras - Development of pre- and post-processing algorithms and function output - Development of optimization of image recognition algorithm

3) AD decision/control SW - Development of information-based map generation technology recognized by many vehicles - Development of learning-based nearby object behavior prediction model - Development of driving mode determination and collision prevention function of Lv 3 autonomous driving system

The Prediction & Behavior ML team is responsible for developing machine-learned models that understand the full scene around our vehicle and forecast the behavior for other agents, our own vehicle’s actions, and for offline applications. To solve these problems we develop deep learning algorithms that can learn behaviors from data and apply them on-vehicle to influence our vehicle’s driving behavior and offline to provide learned models to autonomy simulation and validation. Given the tight integration of behavior forecasting and motion planning, our team necessarily works very closely with the Planner team in the advancement of our overall vehicle behavior. The Prediction & Behavior ML team also works closely with our Perception, Simulation, and Systems Engineering teams on many cross-team initiatives.

Redmond, Washington, United States

Overview Within AI Platform, the Cognitive Services team empowers developers and data scientists around the world and of all skill levels to easily add AI capabilities to their apps. #aiplatform

We are looking for a Research Scientist with a background in Computer Vision, Natural Language Processing and/or Artificial Intelligence, including topics like layout analysis, chart understanding, multi-page multi-document question answering, novel ways of leveraging large language models for document understanding and solving problems inherent to large language models (grounding, retrieval-based generation, etc.). Familiarity with modern large language models is a plus, but not required.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.

Responsibilities Your responsibilities will include:

Conduct pioneering research to propel the state-of-the-art in various tasks in document understanding. Work closely with fellow Research Scientists and Product Engineering teams to translate research outcomes into practical solutions. Provide expertise and support to the engineering team on various challenges, fostering collaboration between research and practical application. Take charge of the research agenda from problem definition to algorithm and model development.

Zoox is looking for a software engineer to join our Perception team and help us build novel architectures for classifying and understanding the complex and dynamic environments in our cities. In this role, you will have access to the best sensor data in the world and an incredible infrastructure for testing and validating your algorithms. We are creating new algorithms for segmentation, tracking, classification, and high-level scene understanding, and you could work on any (or all!) of these components.

We're looking for engineers with advanced degrees and experience building perception pipelines that work with real data in rapidly changing and uncertain environments.