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.

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.

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 Seattle, WA Arlington, VA New York, NY San Francisco, CA

Description Join us at the cutting edge of Amazon's sustainability initiatives to work on environmental and social advancements to support Amazon's long term worldwide sustainability strategy. At Amazon, we're working to be the most customer-centric company on earth. To get there, we need exceptionally talented, bright, and driven people.

The Worldwide Sustainability (WWS) organization capitalizes on Amazon’s scale & speed to build a more resilient and sustainable company. We manage our social and environmental impacts globally, driving solutions that enable our customers, businesses, and the world around us to become more sustainable.

Sustainability Science and Innovation (SSI) is a multi-disciplinary team within the WW Sustainability organization that combines science, analytics, economics, statistics, machine learning, product development, and engineering expertise. We use this expertise and skills to identify, develop and evaluate the science and innovations necessary for Amazon, customers and partners to meet their long-term sustainability goals and commitments.

We’re seeking a Senior Principal Scientist for Sustainability and Climate AI to drive technical strategy and innovation for our long-term sustainability and climate commitments through AI & ML. You will serve as the strategic technical advisor to science, emerging tech, and climate pledge partners operating at the Director, VPs, and SVP level. You will set the next generation modeling standards for the team and tackle the most immature/complex modeling problems following the latest sustainability/climate sciences. Staying hyper current with emergent sustainability/climate science and machine learning trends, you'll be trusted to translate recommendations to leadership and be the voice of our interpretation. You will nurture a continuous delivery culture to embed informed, science-based decision-making into existing mechanisms, such as decarbonization strategies, ESG compliance, and risk management. You will also have the opportunity to collaborate with the Climate Pledge team to define strategies based on emergent science/tech trends and influence investment strategy. As a leader on this team, you'll play a key role in worldwide sustainability organizational planning, hiring, mentorship and leadership development.

If you see yourself as a thought leader and innovator at the intersection of climate science and tech, we’d like to connect with you.

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 Amazon's Compliance Shared Services (CoSS) is looking for a smart, energetic, and creative Sr Applied Scientist to extend and invent state-of-the-art research in multi-modal architectures, large language models across federated and continuous learning paradigms spread across multiple systems to join the Applied Research Science team in Seattle. At Amazon, we are working to be the most customer-centric company on earth. Millions of customers trust us to ensure a safe shopping experience. This is an exciting and challenging position to deliver scientific innovations into production systems at Amazon-scale that increase automation accuracy and coverage, and extend and invent new research as a key author to deliver re-usable foundational capabilities for automation.

You will analyze and process large amounts of image, text and tabular data from product detail pages, combine them with additional external and internal sources of multi-modal data, evaluate state-of-the-art algorithms and frameworks, and develop new algorithms in federated and continuous learning modes that can be integrated and launched across multiple systems. You will partner with engineers and product managers across multiple Amazon teams to design new ML solutions implemented across worldwide Amazon stores for the entire Amazon product catalog.

Seattle, US

Our Company Changing the world through digital experiences is what Adobe’s all about. We give everyone—from emerging artists to global brands—everything they need to design and deliver exceptional digital experiences. We’re passionate about empowering people to craft beautiful and powerful images, videos, and apps, and transform how companies interact with customers across every screen.

We’re on a mission to hire the very best and are committed to building exceptional employee experiences where everyone is respected and has access to equal opportunity. We realize that new ideas can come from everywhere in the organization, and we know the next big idea could be yours!

The Opportunity Photoshop ART is seeking a Research Scientist to join our inpainting R&D team focused on making significant progress in image generation/restoration, low level vision, image editing with an eventual posture toward productization. Individuals in this role are expected to be expert in identified research areas such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer vision, and image processing. The ideal candidate will have a keen interest in producing new science to advance Adobe products.

What you'll Do Work towards long-term results-oriented research goals, while identifying intermediate achievements. Contribute to research that can be applied to Adobe product development. Help integrating novel research work into Adobe’s product. Lead and collaborate on research projects across different Adobe divisions. What you need to succeed Ph.D. and solid publications in machine learning, AI, computer science, statistics, or scene semantic understanding. Experience communicating research for public audiences of peers. Experience working in teams. Knowledge in a programming language. Preferred Qualification 2 years of professional full-time experience preferred, but not required 2+ year(s) of internship with primary emphasis on AI research in image generation, low level vision, image restoration, and segmentation Experience in collaboration with a team with varied strengths. 4+ First-author publications at peer-reviewed AI conferences (e.g. NIPS, CVPR, ECCV, ICML, ICLR, ICCV, and ACL). Experience in developing and debugging in Python. At Adobe, you will be immersed in an exceptional work environment that is recognized throughout the world on Best Companies lists. You will also be surrounded by colleagues who are committed to helping each other grow through our unique Check-In approach where ongoing feedback flows freely.

If you’re looking to make an impact, Adobe's the place for you. Discover what our employees are saying about their career experiences on the Adobe Life blog and explore the meaningful benefits we offer.

Adobe is an equal opportunity employer. We welcome and encourage diversity in the workplace regardless of gender, race or color, ethnicity or national origin, age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or veteran status.

Our compensation reflects the cost of labor across several  U.S. geographic markets, and we pay differently based on those defined markets. The U.S. pay range for this position is $129,400 -- $242,200 annually. Pay within this range varies by work location and may also depend on job-relate

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".

Mountain View

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 looking for an experienced Research Engineer to help us in our journey to scale end-to-end neural networks for autonomous driving. You’ll be working across our research team to build, integrate, test and scale algorithms, tools, and machine learning solutions for autonomous driving.

What you will bring to Wayve 5+ years of software engineering experience in an industrial research environment Passion to work in a team on research ideas that have real world impact Strong software engineering experience in Python and other relevant languages (especially C++ and CUDA) Ideally with direct experience working in at least one of computer vision, robotics, simulation, graphics, large language models Ideally with several years working on large-scale machine learning algorithms and systems BS, MS, or above in Machine Learning, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical discipline or equivalent experience

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 Fully employer-covered medical, dental and vision insurance! Further benefits such as catered lunch, yummy snacks, and variety of drinks, life insurance, employer contributed retirement account, therapy, yoga, office-wide socials and much more. 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 This is a full-time role based in our office in California. At Wayve we want the best of all worlds so we operate a hybrid working policy that combines time together in our offices and workshops to fuel innovation, culture, relationships and learning, and time spent working from home. We also operate core working hours so you can be where you need to be for family and loved ones too. Teams determine the routines that work best for them.

Location Seattle, WA Palo Alto, CA

Description Amazon’s product search engine is one of the most heavily used services in the world, indexes billions of products, and serves hundreds of millions of customers world-wide. We are working on an AI-first initiative to continue to improve the way we do search through the use of large scale next-generation deep learning techniques. Our goal is to make step function improvements in the use of advanced multi-modal deep-learning models on very large scale datasets, specifically through the use of advanced systems engineering and hardware accelerators. This is a rare opportunity to develop cutting edge Computer Vision and Deep Learning technologies and apply them to a problem of this magnitude. Some exciting questions that we expect to answer over the next few years include: * How can multi-modal inputs in deep-learning models help us deliver delightful shopping experiences to millions of Amazon customers? * Can combining multi-modal data and very large scale deep-learning models help us provide a step-function improvement to the overall model understanding and reasoning capabilities? We are looking for exceptional scientists who are passionate about innovation and impact, and want to work in a team with a startup culture within a larger organization.

B GARAGE was founded in 2017 by two PhD graduates from Stanford University. After having spent over five years researching robotics, computer vision, aeronautics, and drone autonomy, the co-founders 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.

The B GARAGE team is always looking for an enthusiastic, proactive, and collaborative Robotics and Automation Engineers to support the launch of intelligent aerial robots and autonomously sustainable ecosystems.

If you're interested in joining the B Garage team but don't see a role open that fits your background, apply to the general application and we'll reach out to discuss your career goals.

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

Location Bellevue, WA

Description Are you excited about developing generative AI and foundation models to revolutionize automation, robotics and computer vision? Are you looking for opportunities to build and deploy them on real problems at truly vast scale? At Amazon Fulfillment Technologies and Robotics we are on a mission to build high-performance autonomous systems that perceive and act to further improve our world-class customer experience - at Amazon scale.

This role is for the AFT AI team which has deep expertise developing cutting edge AI solutions at scale and successfully applying them to business problems in the Amazon Fulfillment Network. These solutions typically utilize machine learning and computer vision techniques, applied to text, sequences of events, images or video from existing or new hardware. The team is comprised of scientists, who develop machine learning and computer vision solutions, analytics, who evaluate the expected business impact for a project and the performance of these solutions, and software engineers, who provide necessary support such as annotation pipelines and machine learning library development.

We are looking for an Applied Scientist with expertise in computer vision. You will work alongside other CV scientists, engineers, product managers and various stakeholders to deploy vision models at scale across a diverse set of initiatives. If you are a self-motivated individual with a zeal for customer obsession and ownership, and are passionate about applying computer vision for real world problems - this is the team for you.

Canberra/Australia

We are looking for new outstanding PhD students for the upcoming scholarship round (application is due on 31st August 2024) at the Australian National University (ANU is ranked #30 in the QS Ranking 2025) or possibly at another Australian universities.

We are looking for new PhD students to work on new problems that may span over (but are not limited to) "clever" adapting of Foundation Models, LLMs, diffusion models (LORAs etc.,), NERF, or design of Graph Neural Networks, design of new (multi-modal) Self-supervised Learning and Contrastive Learning Models (masked models, images, videos, text, graphs, time series, sequences, etc. ) or adversarial and/or federated learning or other contemporary fundamental/applied problems (e.g., learning without backprop, adapting FMs to be less resource hungry, planning and reasoning, hyperbolic geometry, protein property prediction, structured output generative models, visual relation inference, incremental/learning to learn problems, low shot, etc.)

To succeed, you need an outstanding publication record, e.g., one or more first-author papers in venues such CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, AAAI, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML, IJCAI, ACM KDD, ACCV, BMVC, ACM MM, IEEE. Trans. On Image Processing, CVIU, IEEE TPAMI, or similar (the list is non-exhaustive). Non-first author papers will also help if they are in the mix. Some patents and/or professional experience in Computer Vision, Machine Learning or AI are a bonus. You also need a good GPA to succeed.

We are open to discussing your interests and topics, if you reach out, we can discuss what is possible. Yes, we have GPUs.

If you are interested, reach out for an informal chat with Dr. Koniusz. I am at CVPR if you want to chat?): piotr.koniusz@data61.csiro.au (or piotr.koniusz@anu.edu.au, www.koniusz.com)

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.