Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Overview Microsoft Research (MSR), a leading industrial research laboratory comprised of over 1,000 computer scientists working across the United States, United Kingdom, China, India, Canada, and the Netherlands.

We are currently seeking  a Researcher in the area of  Artificial Specialized Intelligence located in Vancouver, British Columbia, with a keen interest in developing cutting-edge large foundation models and post-training techniques for different domains and scenarios. This is an opportunity to drive an ambitious research agenda while collaborating with diverse teams to push for novel applications of those areas.  
  Over the past 30 years, our scientists have not only conducted world-class computer science research but also integrated advanced technologies into our products and services, positively impacting millions of lives and propelling Microsoft to the forefront of digital transformation.   Responsibilities Conduct cutting-edge research in large foundation models, focusing on applying large foundation models in specific domain. Collaborate with cross-functional teams to integrate solutions into Artificial Intelligence (AI) -driven system. Develop and maintain research prototypes and software tools, ensuring that they are well-documented and adhere to best practices in software development. Publish research findings in top-tier conferences and journals and present your work at industry events. Collaborate with other AI researchers and engineers, sharing knowledge and expertise to foster a culture of innovation and continuous learning within the team.

Inria (Grenoble), France

human-robot interaction, machine learning, computer vision, representation learning

We are looking for highly motivated students joining our team at INRIA. This project will take place in close collaboration between Inria team THOTH and the multidisciplinary institute in artificial intelligence (MIAI) in Grenoble

Topic: Human-robot systems are challenging because the actions of one agent can significantly influence the actions of others. Therefore, anticipating the partner's actions is crucial. By inferring beliefs, intentions, and desires, we can develop cooperative robots that learn to assist humans or other robots effectively. In this project we are in particular interested in estimating human intentions to enable collaborative tasks between humans and robots such as human-to-robot and robot-to-human handovers.

Contact pia.bideau@inria.fr The thesis will be jointly supervised by Pia Bideau (THOTH), Karteek Alahari (THOTH) and Xavier Alameda Pineda (RobotLearn).

Redmond, Washington, United States

Overview Are you interested in developing and optimizing deep learning systems? Are you interested in designing novel technology to accelerate their training and serving for cutting edge models and applications? Do you want to scale large Artificial Intelligence models to their limits on massive supercomputers? Are you interested in being part of an exciting open-source library for deep learning systems? The DeepSpeed team is hiring!

Microsoft's DeepSpeed is an open-source library built on the PyTorch (machine learning framework) ecosystem that combines numerous research innovations and technology advancements to make deep learning efficient and easier to use. DeepSpeed can parallelize across thousands of GPUs and train models with trillions of parameters. Our OSS (Open Source Software) has powered many advanced models like MT-530B and BLOOM, and it supports unprecedented scale and speed for both training and inference.

The DeepSpeed team is also part of the larger Microsoft AI at Scale initiative, which is pioneering the next-generation AI capabilities that are scaled across the company’s products and AI platforms.

The DeepSpeed team is looking for a Senior Researcher in Redmond, WA with passion for innovations and for building high-quality systems that will make significant impact inside and outside of Microsoft. Our team is highly collaborative, innovative, and end-user obsessed. We are looking for candidates with systems skills and passionate about driving innovations to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of deep learning systems. We value creativity, agility, accountability, and a desire to learn new technologies.

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 Excels in one or more subareas and gains expertise in a broad area of research. Identifies and articulates problems in an area of research that are academically novel and may directly or indirectly impact business opportunities. Collaborates with other relevant researchers or research groups to contribute to or advance a research agenda. Researches and develops an understanding of the state-of-the-art insights, tools, technologies, or methods being used in the research community. Expands collaborative relationships with relevant product and business groups inside or outside of Microsoft and provides expertise or technology to them.

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 We are seeking an experienced researcher to be a founding member of our Vancouver team! We are prioritising someone with experience actively participating in AI projects applied to autonomous driving or similar robotics or decision-making domains, inclusive, but not limited to the following specific areas:

Foundation models for robotics or embodied AI Model-free and model-based reinforcement learning Offline reinforcement learning Large language models Planning with learned models, model predictive control and tree search Imitation learning, inverse reinforcement learning and causal inference Learned agent models: behavioural and physical models of cars, people, and other dynamic agents Challenges you will own You'll be working on some of the world's hardest problems, and able to attack them in new ways. You'll be a key member of our diverse, cross-disciplinary team, helping teach our robots how to drive safely and comfortably in complex real-world environments. This encompasses many aspects of research across perception, prediction, planning, and control, including:

How to leverage our large, rich, and diverse sources of real-world driving data How to architect our models to best employ the latest advances in foundation models, transformers, world models, etc, evaluating and incorporating state-of-the-art techniques into our workflows. Which learning algorithms to use (e.g. reinforcement learning, behavioural cloning) How to leverage simulation for controlled experimental insight, training data augmentation, and re-simulation How to scale models efficiently across data, model size, and compute, while maintaining efficient deployment on the car Collaborate with cross-functional teams to integrate research findings into scalable, production-level solutions. You also have the potential to contribute to academic publications for top-tier conferences like NeurIPS, CVPR, ICRA, ICLR, CoRL etc. working in a world-class team, contributing to the scientific community and establishing Wayve as a leader in the field.

What you will bring to Wayve Proven track record of research in one or more of the topics above demonstrated through deployed applications or publications. Strong programming skills in Python, with experience in deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch, numpy, pandas, etc. Experience bringing a machine learning research concept through the full ML development cycle 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 bringing an ML research concept through to production and at scale PhD in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field

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

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Overview Microsoft Research (MSR), a leading industrial research laboratory comprised of over 1,000 computer scientists working across the United States, United Kingdom, China, India, Canada, and the Netherlands.

We are currently seeking a Senior Researcher in the area of  Artificial Specialized Intelligence located in Vancouver, British Columbia, with a keen interest in developing cutting-edge large foundation models and post-training techniques for different domains and scenarios. This is an opportunity to drive an ambitious research agenda while collaborating with diverse teams to push for novel applications of those areas.  
  Over the past 30 years, our scientists have not only conducted world-class computer science research but also integrated advanced technologies into our products and services, positively impacting millions of lives and propelling Microsoft to the forefront of digital transformation.

Responsibilities Conduct cutting-edge research in large foundation models, focusing on applying large foundation models in specific domain. Collaborate with cross-functional teams to integrate solutions into Artificial Intelligence (AI) -driven system. Develop and maintain research prototypes and software tools, ensuring that they are well-documented and adhere to best practices in software development. Publish research findings in top-tier conferences and journals and present your work at industry events. Collaborate with other AI researchers and engineers, sharing knowledge and expertise to foster a culture of innovation and continuous learning within the team.

Location Seattle, WA

Description Interested in solving challenging problems using latest developments in Large Language Models and Artificial Intelligence (AI)? Amazon's Consumer Electronics Technology (CE Tech) organization is redefining shopping experiences leveraging state of the art AI technologies. We are looking for a talented Sr. Applied Scientist with a solid background in the design and development of scalable AI and ML systems and services, deep passion for building ML-powered products, a proven track record of executing complex projects, and delivering high business and customer impact. You will help us shape the future of shopping experiences. As a member of our team, you'll work on cutting-edge projects that directly impact millions of customers, selling partners, and employees every single day. This role will provide exposure to state-of-the-art innovations in AI/ML systems (including GenAI). Technologies you will have exposure to, and/or will work with, include AWS Bedrock, Amazon Q, SageMaker, and Foundational Models such as Anthropic’s Claude / Mistral, among others.

Redmond, Washington, United States

Overview Microsoft Research (MSR) AI Frontiers lab is seeking applications for the position of Senior Research Engineer – Generative AI to join their team in Redmond, WA and New York City, NY.

The mission of the AI Frontiers lab is to expand the pareto frontier of AI capabilities, efficiency, and safety through innovations in foundation models and learning agent platforms. Some of our projects include work on Small Language Models (e.g. Phi, Orca), foundation models for actions (e.g., in gaming, robotics, and Office productivity tools) and Multi-Agent AI (e.g. AutoGen).

We are seeking Senior Research Engineers to join our team and contribute to the advancement of Generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) technologies. As a Research Engineer, you will play a crucial role in developing, improving, and exploring the capabilities of Generative AI models. Your work will have a significant impact on the development of cutting-edge technologies, advancing state-of-the-art and providing practical solutions to real-world problems.  

Our ongoing research areas encompass but are not limited to:

Pre-training: especially of language models, action models and multimodal models Alignment and Post-training: e.g., Instruction tuning and reinforcement learning from feedback Continual Learning: Enabling LLMs to evolve and adapt over time and learn from previous experiences human interactions Specialization: Tailoring models to meet application-specific requirements Orchestration and multi-agent systems: automated orchestration between multiple agents incorporating human feedback and oversight

Microsoft Research (MSR) offers a vibrant environment for cutting-edge, multidisciplinary, research, including access to diverse, real-world problems and data, opportunities for experimentation and real-world impact, an open publication policy, and close links to top academic institutions around the world.

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.

Embody our Culture and Values

Responsibilities As a Senior Research Engineer in AI Frontiers, you will design, develop, execute, and implement technology research projects in collaboration with other researchers, engineers, and product groups.

As a member of a word-class research organization, you will be a part of research breakthroughs in the field and will be given an opportunity to realize your ideas in products and services used worldwide.

You will join a team of 40+ Researchers and Engineers within the R&D Department working on cutting edge challenges in the Generative AI space, with a focus on creating highly realistic, emotional and life-like Synthetic humans through text-to-video. Within the team you’ll have the opportunity to work with different research teams and squads across multiple areas led by our Director of Science, Prof. Vittorio Ferrari, and directly impact our solutions that are used worldwide by over 55,000 businesses.

If you have seen the full ML lifecycle from ideation through implementation, testing and release, and you have a passion for large data, large model training and building solutions with clean code, this is your chance. This is an opportunity to work for a company that is impacting businesses at a rapid pace across the globe.

Job Description Summary As a Research Engineer involved in the design of electrical machines, you will work in a collaborative team environment. You will be contributing to the development of advanced machine system concepts as well as their implementation for application to aircraft engine systems, power generation, and electric and hybrid vehicle applications. As part of a multi-disciplinary team, you will contribute to the planning, development, and transition of technologies from concept to products and/or services for GE Aerospace internal and external clients.

GE Aerospace Research will continue to play a vital role in supporting the industry through a historic recovery while shaping the future of flight. We invent the future of flight, lift people up and bring them home safely. Our commitment to lead the industry, to keep safe the flying public and the armed forces, and to lift up one another and our communities, remains our north star. Our purpose is what ties us to one another and gives meaning to our work.

Roles and Responsibilities

Work with customers to identify key system requirements.

Determine electrical machine (generators, motors, power delivery, and accessories') requirements by studying system and customer requirements.

Use system simulation tools, such as MATLAB, Simulink, and PLECS, to validate and refine control algorithms for a wide array of electric machines to ensure the system will perform in a manner consistent with the requirements.

Integrate the output of finite element analysis and other machine design software to determine and implement machine parameters within the system model.

Work closely with the electrical machine design team to make sure the physical machine meets requirements.

Develop and implement test procedures for electrical machine systems and document performance characteristics.

Deliver effective presentations, reports, and publications to Global Research, GE Businesses, government agencies, professional societies, and peer-reviewed journals.

Required Qualifications

PHD in Electrical Engineering or related field, with primary focus in controls applied to electric machines.

In-depth knowledge of electrical machines including electromagnetic, thermal as well as mechanical technology aspects.

Experience in a wide variety of machine topologies

Expertise in simulation tools such as finite elements, MATLAB (Simulink) and others such as PLECS.

US Citizenship required

Must be willing to work out of an office located in Niskayuna, NY

Must be 18 years or older

You must submit your application for employment on the careers page at www.gecareers.com to be considered.

Desired Characteristics

Experience in Automotive Hybrid Electrical or Aerospace Systems.

Strong interpersonal skills.

Strong analytical skills.

Ability to work across all functions/levels as part of a global team.

Ability to work under pressure and meet deadlines.

Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

Strong ties to the external technical community.

Entrepreneurial inclination

The base pay range for this position is 80,000 - 150,000 USD Annually. The specific pay offered may be influenced by a variety of factors, including the candidate’s experience, education, and skill set. This position is also eligible for an annual discretionary bonus based on a percentage of your base salary. This posting is expected to close on July 12, 2024

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

Captions is the AI-powered creative studio. Millions of creators around the world have used Captions to make their video content stand out from the pack and we're on a mission to empower the next billion.

Based in NYC, we are a team of ambitious, experienced, and devoted engineers, designers, and marketers. You'll be joining an early team where you'll have an outsized impact on both the product and company's culture.

We’re very fortunate to have some the best investors and entrepreneurs backing us, including Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Uncommon Projects, Kevin Systrom, Mike Krieger, Antoine Martin, Julie Zhuo, Ben Rubin, Jaren Glover, SVAngel, 20VC, Ludlow Ventures, Chapter One, Lenny Rachitsky, and more.

Check out our latest milestone and our recent feature on the TODAY show and the New York Times.

** Please note that all of our roles will require you to be in-person at our NYC HQ (located in Union Square) **

Responsibilities:

Conduct research and develop models to advance the state-of-the-art in generative computer vision technologies, with a focus on creating highly realistic digital faces, bodies, avatars.

Strive to set new standards in the realism of 3D digital human appearance, movement, and personality, ensuring that generated content closely resembles real-life scenarios.

Implement techniques to achieve high-quality results in zero-shot or few-shot settings, as well as customized avatars for different use cases while maintaining speed and accuracy.

Develop innovative solutions to enable comprehensive customization of video content, including the creation of digital people, modifying scenes, and manipulating actions and speech within videos.

Preferred Qualifications:

PhD in computer science (or related field) and/ or 5+ years of industry experience.

Strong academic background with a focus on computer vision and transformers, specializing in NeRFs, Gaussian Splatting, Diffusion, GANs or related areas.

Publication Record: Highly relevant publication history, with a focus on generating or manipulating realistic digital faces, bodies, expressions, body movements, etc. Ideal candidates will have served as the primary author on these publications.

Expertise in Deep Learning: Proficiency in deep learning frameworks such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, or similar, with hands-on experience in designing, training, and deploying neural networks for multimodal tasks.

Strong understanding of Computer Science fundamentals (algorithms and data structures).

Benefits: Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision plans

Anything you need to do your best work

We’ve done team off-sites to places like Paris, London, Park City, Los Angeles, Upstate NY, and Nashville with more planned in the future.

Captions provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.

Please note benefits apply to full time employees only.

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.

Redwood City, CA; or Remote, US

We help make autonomous technologies more efficient, safer, and accessible.

Helm.ai builds AI software for autonomous driving and robotics. Our "Deep Teaching" methodology is uniquely data and capital efficient, allowing us to surpass traditional approaches. Our unsupervised learning software can train neural networks without the need for human annotation or simulation and is hardware-agnostic. We work with some of the world's largest automotive manufacturers and we've raised over $100M from Honda, Goodyear Ventures, Mando, and others to help us scale.

Our team is made up of people with a diverse set of experiences in software and academia. We work together towards one common goal: to integrate the software you'll help us build into hundreds of millions of vehicles.

We offer: - Competitive health insurance options - 401K plan management - Remote-friendly and flexible team culture - Free lunch and fully-stocked kitchen in our South Bay office - Additional perks: monthly wellness stipend, office set up allowance, company retreats, and more to come as we scale - The opportunity to work on one of the most interesting, impactful problems of the decade

Visit our website to apply for a position.

London

Who are we?

Our team is the first in the world to use autonomous vehicles on public roads using end-to-end deep learning, computer vision and reinforcement learning. Leveraging our multi-national world-class team of researchers and engineers, we’re using data to learn more intelligent algorithms to bring autonomy for everyone, everywhere. We aim to be the future of self-driving cars, learning from experience and data.

Where you’ll have an impact

We are currently looking for people with research expertise in AI applied to autonomous driving or similar robotics or decision making domain, inclusive, but not limited to the following specific areas:

Foundation models for robotics Model-free and model-based reinforcement learning Offline reinforcement learning Large language models Planning with learned models, model predictive control and tree search Imitation learning, inverse reinforcement learning and causal inference Learned agent models: behavioral and physical models of cars, people, and other dynamic agents You'll be working on some of the world's hardest problems, and able to attack them in new ways. You'll be a key member of our diverse, cross-disciplinary team, helping teach our robots how to drive safely and comfortably in complex real-world environments. This encompasses many aspects of research across perception, prediction, planning, and control, including:

How to leverage our large, rich, and diverse sources of real-world driving data How to architect our models to best employ the latest advances in foundation models, transformers, world models, etc. Which learning algorithms to use (e.g. reinforcement learning, behavioural cloning) How to leverage simulation for controlled experimental insight, training data augmentation, and re-simulation How to scale models efficiently across data, model size, and compute, while maintaining efficient deployment on the car You also have the potential to contribute to academic publications for top-tier conferences like NeurIPS, CVPR, ICRA, ICLR, CoRL etc. working in a world-class team to achieve this.

What you’ll bring to Wayve

Thorough knowledge of and 5+ years applied experience in AI research, computer vision, deep learning, reinforcement learning or robotics Ability to deliver high quality code and familiarity with deep learning frameworks (Python and Pytorch preferred) Experience leading a research agenda aligned with larger goals Industrial and / or academic experience in deep learning, software engineering, automotive or robotics Experience working with training data, metrics, visualisation tools, and in-depth analysis of results Ability to understand, author and critique cutting-edge research papers Familiarity with code-reviewing, C++, Linux, Git is a plus PhD in a relevant area and / or track records of delivering value through machine learning are a big plus. What we offer you

Attractive compensation with salary and equity Immersion in a team of world-class researchers, engineers and entrepreneurs A unique position to shape the future of autonomy and tackle the biggest challenge of our time Bespoke learning and development opportunities Relocation support with visa sponsorship Flexible working hours - we trust you to do your job well, at times that suit you and your time Benefits such as an onsite chef, workplace nursery scheme, private health insurance, therapy, daily yoga, onsite bar, large social budgets, unlimited L&D requests, enhanced parental leave, and more!

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Overview Microsoft Research (MSR), a leading industrial research laboratory, comprises over 1,000 computer scientists working across the United States, United Kingdom, China, India, Canada, and the Netherlands.

We are currently seeking Principal Researcher in the area of Artificial Specialized Intelligence and artificial general intelligence located in Vancouver, British Columbia.

This is an opportunity to drive an ambitious research agenda while collaborating with diverse teams to push for novel applications of those areas.

Over the past 30 years, our scientists have not only conducted world-class computer science research but also integrated advanced technologies into our products and services, positively impacting millions of lives and propelling Microsoft to the forefront of digital transformation.

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 Identifying and driving new research directions, creating new technologies and collaborating with Microsoft product groups and external partners to deploy them in real-world settings. Stay current with the latest trends, research, and developments in AI, machine learning, and system architecture to ensure our systems remain at the forefront of innovation. Evaluate the performance of AI-centric systems and provide recommendations for improvement and optimization. Publish research findings in peer-reviewed journals, conferences, and other relevant venues, and present research results to internal and external stakeholders. Mentor and guide researchers and engineers in their research and development efforts. Collaborate with industry partners and academic institutions to drive joint research projects and initiatives.