Redmond, Washington, United States

Overview The Microsoft Research AI Frontiers group in Redmond is looking for a Senior Research Software Engineer to build state-of-the-art tools for evaluating and understanding foundation models, with a focus of real-world uses of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Our team conducts influential research published at top-tier venues in AI and ML (including NeurIPS, ICML, AAAI, and FAccT) and works within Microsoft’s Responsible AI ecosystem to impact our AI-driven technologies such as Azure, Office, and Bing.

We are seeking candidates with demonstrated ability for technical work in the space of large foundational models with proficient coding and machine learning skills. The preferred candidate is:

Passionate about rigorous evaluation, understanding, and development of foundational models.
Motivated to make successful research methods accessible to the AI community through prototypes, open-source libraries, and development tools. Proficient in design thinking and Object Oriented Design (OOD), building clean, modular, maintainable and user-friendly open-source ML Experienced in measuring and maximizing the impact of open-source libraries.

As a Senior Research Software Engineer, you will play a crucial role in designing and developing impactful, high quality and well-engineered frameworks to empower the scientific evaluation, understanding, and development of foundational models. You will work closely with a team of passionate researchers and engineers to make sure such frameworks are compatible with modern cloud platforms, Machine Learning (ML) frameworks and libraries, model architectures, and various data modalities. You will also play a central role in defining and running large-scale experiments that contribute to our team’s research.

We are looking for a team player interested in developing next-generation platforms and tools for Machine Learning (ML) as well as conducting state-of-the-art research. Topics of interest include but are not limited to rigorous evaluation and benchmarking, advances in AI interpretability, bias and fairness, and safety in real-world deployments. Our group takes a holistic approach to studying foundational models that includes a variety of data modalities (language, vision, multi-modal, and structured data) and modern model architectures. Candidates should demonstrate expertise in many of these aspects or show that they are interested in generalizing their skills into a variety of modalities and architectures.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more, and we’re dedicated to this mission across every aspect of our company. Our culture is centered on embracing a growth mindset and encouraging teams and leaders to bring their best each day. Join us and help shape the future of the world.

Responsibilities Collaborate with a dedicated research and engineering team to design and develop ML frameworks for model evaluation and understanding.

• Define benchmarks and execute experiments for rigorous model evaluation and understanding.

• System Design and Object-Oriented Design: Envision elegant solutions and craft scalable and efficient systems to drive the success of our Machile Learning (ML) frameworks. Develop clean, modular, and maintainable code to shape the foundation of our evaluation framework.

• Work closely with partner engineering teams in both research and production.

• Mentor or onboard incoming engineering contributors and empower them to maximize the team’s impact.

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

We are seeking an experienced researcher to be a founding member of our Vancouver team! We are prioritising someone with experience leading projects in AI 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, oral 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 technical leader within 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:

Actively contributing to the Science’s technical leadership community, inclusive of proposing new projects, organising their work, and delivering substantial impact across Wayve. Leveraging our large, rich, and diverse sources of real-world driving data Architecting 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 Investigating learning algorithms to use (e.g. reinforcement learning, behavioural cloning) Leveraging simulation for controlled experimental insight, training data augmentation, and re-simulation Scaling models efficiently across data, model size, and compute, while maintaining efficient deployment on the car Collaborating with cross-functional, international teams to integrate research findings into scalable, production-level solutions Potentially contributing 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. Experience leading a research agenda aligned with larger organisation or company goals 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. 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

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.

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.

Location Madrid, ESP

Description Amazon's International Technology org in EU (EU INTech) is creating new ways for Amazon customers discovering Amazon catalog through new and innovative Customer experiences. Our vision is to provide the most relevant content and CX for their shopping mission. We are responsible for building the software and machine learning models to surface high quality and relevant content to the Amazon customers worldwide across the site.

The team, mainly located in Madrid Technical Hub, London and Luxembourg, comprises Software Developer and ML Engineers, Applied Scientists, Product Managers, Technical Product Managers and UX Designers who are experts on several areas of ranking, computer vision, recommendations systems, Search as well as CX. Are you interested on how the experiences that fuel Catalog and Search are built to scale to customers WW? Are interesting on how we use state of the art AI to generate and provide the most relevant content?

We are looking for Applied Scientists who are passionate to solve highly ambiguous and challenging problems at global scale. You will be responsible for major science challenges for our team, including working with text to image and image to text state of the art models to scale to enable new Customer Experiences WW. You will design, develop, deliver and support a variety of models in collaboration with a variety of roles and partner teams around the world. You will influence scientific direction and best practices and maintain quality on team deliverables.

Redmond, Washington, United States

Overview We are seeking a highly skilled and passionate Research Scientist to join our Responsible & OpenAI Research (ROAR) team in Azure Cognitive Services.

As a Research Scientist, you will play a key role in advancing the field of Responsible Artificial Intelligence (AI) to ensure safe releases of the rapidly advancing AI technologies, such as GPT-4, GPT-4V, DALL-E 3 and beyond, as well as to expand and enhance our standalone Azure AI Content Safety Service.

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.

In alignment with our Microsoft values, we are committed to cultivating an inclusive work environment for all employees to positively impact our culture every day.

Responsibilities Conduct cutting-edge research to develop Responsible AI definitions, methodologies, algorithms, and models for both measurement and mitigation of AI risks. Stay abreast of the latest advancements in the field and contribute to the scientific community through publications at top venues. Contribute to the development of Responsible AI policies, guidelines, and best practices and ensure the practical implementation of these guidelines within various AI technology stacks across Microsoft, promoting a consistent approach to Responsible AI. Enable the safe release of new Azure OpenAI Service features, expand and enhance the Azure AI Content Safety Service with new detection technologies. Develop innovative approaches to address AI safety challenges for diverse customer scenarios. Other: Embody our Culture and Values

Location Multiple Locations

Description

Qualcomm's Multimedia R&D and Standards Group is seeking candidates for Video Compression Research Engineer positions. You will be part of world-renowned team of video compression experts. The team develops algorithms, hardware architectures, and systems for state-of-the-art applications of classical and machine learning methods in video compression, video processing, point cloud coding and processing, AR/VR and computer vision use cases. The successful candidate for this position will be a highly self-directed individual with strong creative and analytic skills and a passion for video compression technology. You will work on, but not be limited to, developing new applications of classical and machine learning methods in video compression improving state-of-the-art video codecs.

We are considering candidates with various levels of experience. We are flexible on location and open to hiring anywhere, preferred locations are USA, Germany and Taiwan.

Responsibilities: Contribute to the conception, development, implementation, and optimization of new algorithms extending existing techniques and systems allowing improved video compression. Initiate ideas, design and implement algorithms for superior hardware encoder performance, including perceptually based bit allocation. Develop new algorithms for deep learning-based video compression solutions. Represent Qualcomm in the related standardization forums: JVET, MPEG Video, and ITU-T/VCEG. Document and present new algorithms and implementations in various forms, including standards contributions, patent applications, conference and journal publications, presentations, etc. Ideal candidate would have the skills/experience below: Expert knowledge of the theory, algorithms, and techniques used in video and image coding. Knowledge and experience of video codecs and their test models, such as ECM, VVC, HEVC and AV1. Experience with deep learning structures CNN, RNN, autoencoder etc. and frameworks like TensorFlow/PyTorch. Track record of successful research accomplishments demonstrated through published papers, and/or patent applications in the fields of video coding or video processing. Solid programming and debugging skills in C/C++. Strong written and verbal English communication skills, great work ethic, and ability to work in a team environment to accomplish common goals. PhD or Masters degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Physics, Mathematics or similar field, or equivalent practical experience.

Qualifications: PhD or Masters degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Physics, Mathematics, or similar fields. 1+ years of experience with programming language such as C, C++, MATLAB, etc.

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.

Geomagical Labs is a 3D R&D lab, in partnership with IKEA. We create magical mixed-reality experiences for hundreds of millions of users, using computer vision, neural networks, graphics, and computational photography. Last year we launched IKEA Kreativ, and we’re excited for what’s next! We have an opening in our lab for a senior computer vision researcher, with 3D Reconstruction and Deep Learning expertise, to develop and improve the underlying algorithms powering our consumer products. We are looking for highly-motivated, creative, applied researchers with entrepreneurial drive, that are excited about building novel technologies and shipping them all the way to the hands of millions of customers!

Requirements: Ph.D. and 2+ years of experience, or Master's and 6+ years of experience, focused on 3D Computer Vision and Deep Learning. Experience in classical methods for 3D Reconstruction: SfM/SLAM, Multi-view Stereo, RGB-D Fusion. Experience in using Deep Learning for 3D Reconstruction and/or Scene Understanding, having worked in any of: Depth Estimation, Room Layout Estimation, NeRFs, Inverse Rendering, 3D Scene Understanding. Familiarity with Computer Graphics and Computational Photography. Expertise in ML frameworks and libraries, e.g. PyTorch. Highly productive in Python. Ability to architect and implement complex systems at the micro and macro level. Entrepreneurial: Adventurous, self-driven, comfortable under uncertainty, with a desire to make systems work end-to-end. Innovative; with a track record of patents and/or first-authored publications at leading workshops or conferences such as CVPR, ECCV/ICCV, SIGGRAPH, ISMAR, NeurIPS, ICLR etc. Experience in developing technologies that got integrated into products, as well as post-launch performance tracking and shipping improvements. [Bonus] Comfortable with C++.

Benefits: Join a mission-driven R&D lab, strategically backed by an influential global brand. Work in a dynamic team of computer vision, AI, computational photography, AR, graphics, and design professionals, and successful serial entrepreneurs. Opportunity to publish novel and relevant research. Fully remote work available to people living in the USA or Canada. Headquartered in downtown Palo Alto, California --- an easy walk from restaurants, coffee shops and Caltrain commuter rail. The USA base salary for this full-time position ranges from $180,000 to $250,000 determined by location, role, skill, and experience level. Geomagical Labs offers a comprehensive set of benefits, and for qualifying roles, substantial incentive grants, vesting annually.

Location Multiple Locations

Description

Members of our team are part of a multi-disciplinary core research group within Qualcomm which spans software, hardware, and systems. Our members contribute technology deployed worldwide by partnering with our business teams across mobile, compute, automotive, cloud, and IOT. We also perform and publish state-of-the-art research on a wide range of topics in machine-learning, ranging from general theory to techniques that enable deployment on resource-constrained devices. Our research team has demonstrated first-in-the-world research and proof-of-concepts in areas such model efficiency, neural video codecs, video semantic segmentation, federated learning, and wireless RF sensing (https://www.qualcomm.com/ai-research), has won major research competitions such as the visual wake word challenge, and converted leading research into best-in-class user-friendly tools such as Qualcomm Innovation Center’s AI Model Efficiency Toolkit (https://github.com/quic/aimet). We recently demonstrated the feasibility of running a foundation model (Stable Diffusion) with >1 billion parameters on an Android phone under one second after performing our full-stack AI optimizations on the model.

Role responsibility can include both, applied and fundamental research in the field of machine learning with development focus in one or many of the following areas:

• Conducts fundamental machine learning research to create new models or new training methods in various technology areas, e.g. large language models, deep generative models (VAE, Normalizing-Flow, ARM, etc), Bayesian deep learning, equivariant CNNs, adversarial learning, diffusion models, active learning, Bayesian optimizations, unsupervised learning, and ML combinatorial optimization using tools like graph neural networks, learned message-passing heuristics, and reinforcement learning.

• Drives systems innovations for model efficiency advancement on device as well as in the cloud. This includes auto-ML methods (model-based, sampling based, back-propagation based) for model compression, quantization, architecture search, and kernel/graph compiler/scheduling with or without systems-hardware co-design.

• Performs advanced platform research to enable new machine learning compute paradigms, e.g., compute in memory, on-device learning/training, edge-cloud distributed/federated learning, causal and language-based reasoning.

• Creates new machine learning models for advanced use cases that achieve state-of-the-art performance and beyond. The use cases can broadly include computer vision, audio, speech, NLP, image, video, power management, wireless, graphics, and chip design

• Design, develop & test software for machine learning frameworks that optimize models to run efficiently on edge devices. Candidate is expected to have strong interest and deep passion on making leading-edge deep learning algorithms work on mobile/embedded platforms for the benefit of end users.

• Research, design, develop, enhance, and implement different components of machine learning compiler for HW Accelerators.

• Design, implement and train DL/RL algorithms in high-level languages/frameworks (PyTorch and TensorFlow).

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.

Location Madrid, ESP

Description At Amazon, we are committed to being the Earth’s most customer-centric company. The International Technology group (InTech) owns the enhancement and delivery of Amazon’s cutting-edge engineering to all the varied customers and cultures of the world. We do this through a combination of partnerships with other Amazon technical teams and our own innovative new projects.

You will be joining the Tools and Machine learning (Tamale) team. As part of InTech, Tamale strives to solve complex catalog quality problems using challenging machine learning and data analysis solutions. You will be exposed to cutting edge big data and machine learning technologies, along to all Amazon catalog technology stack, and you'll be part of a key effort to improve our customers experience by tackling and preventing defects in items in Amazon's catalog.

We are looking for a passionate, talented, and inventive Scientist with a strong machine learning background to help build industry-leading machine learning solutions. We strongly value your hard work and obsession to solve complex problems on behalf of Amazon customers.

A postdoctoral position is available in Harvard Ophthalmology Artificial Intelligence (AI) Lab (https://ophai.hms.harvard.edu) under the supervision of Dr. Mengyu Wang (https://ophai.hms.harvard.edu/team/dr-wang/) at Schepens Eye Research Institute of Massachusetts Eye and Ear and Harvard Medical School. The start date is flexible, with a preference for candidates capable of starting in August or September 2024. The initial appointment will be for one year with the possibility of extension. Review of applications will begin immediately and will continue until the position is filled. Salary for the postdoctoral fellow will follow the NIH guideline commensurate with years of postdoctoral research experience.

In the course of this interdisciplinary project, the postdoc will collaborate with a team of world-class scientists and clinicians with backgrounds in visual psychophysics, engineering, biostatistics, computer science, and ophthalmology. The postdoc will work on developing statistical and machine learning models to improve the diagnosis and prognosis of common eye diseases such as glaucoma, age-related macular degeneration, and diabetic retinopathy. The postdoc will have access to abundant resources for education, career development and research both from the Harvard hospital campus and Harvard University campus. More than half of our postdocs secured a faculty position after their time in our lab.

For our data resources, we have about 3 million 2D fundus photos and more than 1 million 3D optical coherence tomography scans. Please check http://ophai.hms.harvard.edu/data for more details. For our GPU resources, we have 22 in-house GPUs in total including 8 80-GB Nvidia H100 GPUs, 10 48-GB Nvidia RTX A6000 GPUs, and 4 Nvidia RTX 6000 GPUs. Please check http://ophai.hms.harvard.edu/computing for more details. Our recent research has been published in ICCV 2023, ICLR 2024, CVPR 2024, IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, and Medical Image Analysis. Please check https://github.com/Harvard-Ophthalmology-AI-Lab for more details.

The successful applicant will:

1. possess or be on track to complete a PhD or MD with background in computer science, mathematics, computational science, statistics, machine learning, deep learning, computer vision, image processing, biomedical engineering, bioinformatics, visual science and ophthalmology or a related field. Fluency in written and spoken English is essential.

2. have strong programming skills (Python, R, MATLAB, C++, etc.) and in-depth understanding of statistics and machine learning. Experience with Linux clusters is a plus.

3. have a strong and productive publication record.

4. have a strong work ethic and time management skills along with the ability to work independently and within a multidisciplinary team as required.

Your application should include:

1. curriculum vitae

2. statement of past research accomplishments, career goal and how this position will help you achieve your goals

3. Two representative publications

4. contact information for three references

The application should be sent to Mengyu Wang via email (mengyu_wang at meei.harvard.edu) with subject “Postdoctoral Application in Harvard Ophthalmology AI Lab".

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.

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.