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

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

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

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

Location 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.

Location Seattle, WA

Description Amazon Advertising is one of Amazon's fastest growing businesses. Amazon's advertising portfolio helps merchants, retail vendors, and brand owners succeed via native advertising, which grows incremental sales of their products sold through Amazon. The primary goals are to help shoppers discover new products they love, be the most efficient way for advertisers to meet their business objectives, and build a sustainable business that continuously innovates on behalf of customers. Our products and solutions are strategically important to enable our Retail and Marketplace businesses to drive long-term growth. We deliver billions of ad impressions and millions of clicks and break fresh ground in product and technical innovations every day!

The Creative X team within Amazon Advertising time aims to democratize access to high-quality creatives (images, videos) by building AI-driven solutions for advertisers. To accomplish this, we are investing in latent-diffusion models, large language models (LLM), computer vision (CV), reinforced learning (RL), and image + video and audio synthesis. You will be part of a close-knit team of applied scientists and product managers who are highly collaborative and at the top of their respective fields.

We are looking for talented Applied Scientists who are adept at a variety of skills, especially with computer vision, latent diffusion or related foundational models that will accelerate our plans to generate high-quality creatives on behalf of advertisers. Every member of the team is expected to build customer (advertiser) facing features, contribute to the collaborative spirit within the team, publish, patent, and bring cutting edge research to raise the bar within the team.

As a systems engineer for perception safety, your primary responsibility will be to define and ensure the safety performance of the perception system. You will be working in close collaboration with perception algorithm and sensor hardware development teams.

We are seeking a highly motivated candidate for a fully funded PhD position to work in 3D computer graphics and 3D computer vision.

The successful candidate will join the 3D Graphics and Vision research group led by Prof. Binh-Son Hua at the School of Computer Science and Statistics, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland to work on topics related to generative AI in the 3D domain.

The School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College Dublin is a collegiate, friendly, and research-intensive centre for academic study and research excellence. The School has been ranked #1 in Ireland, top 25 in Europe, and top 100 Worldwide (QS Subject Rankings 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021).

The PhD student is expected to conduct fundamental research and publish in top-tier computer vision and computer graphics conferences (CVPR, ECCV, ICCV, SIGGRAPH) and journals (TPAMI, IJCV).

The start date of the position is September 01, 2024. The position is fully funded for 4 years by Science Foundation Ireland.

The successful candidate will require the following skills and knowledge: • Bachelor or Master in Computer Science or related fields; • Strong competence in computer graphics, computer vision; • Solid experience in academic research and publications is an advantage; • Additional background in math, statistics, or physics is an advantage. • Hands-on experience in training deep models; • Hands-on experience in computer graphics and computer vision application development such as OpenGL, OpenCV, CUDA, Blender; • Strong programming skills in C++, Python. Capability in implementing systems based on open-source software.

Applicants should provide the following information: • A comprehensive CV; • Academic transcripts of Bachelor and Master’s degree; • The name and contact details of two referees.

Interested candidates can email Binh-Son Hua (https://sonhua.github.io) for an informal discussion of the position. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis until the position has been filled.

Seattle, WA or Costa Mesa, CA

Anduril Industries is a defense technology company with a mission to transform U.S. and allied military capabilities with advanced technology. By bringing the expertise, technology, and business model of the 21st century’s most innovative companies to the defense industry, Anduril is changing how military systems are designed, built and sold. Anduril’s family of systems is powered by Lattice OS, an AI-powered operating system that turns thousands of data streams into a realtime, 3D command and control center. As the world enters an era of strategic competition, Anduril is committed to bringing cutting-edge autonomy, AI, computer vision, sensor fusion, and networking technology to the military in months, not years.

The Vehicle Autonomy (Robotics) team at Anduril develops aerial and ground-based robotic systems. The team is responsible for taking products like Ghost, Anvil, and our Sentry Tower from paper sketches to operational systems. We work in close coordination with specialist teams like Perception, Autonomy, and Manufacturing to solve some of the hardest problems facing our customers. We are looking for software engineers and roboticists excited about creating a powerful robotics stack that includes computer vision, motion planning, SLAM, controls, estimation, and secure communications.

WHAT YOU'LL DO -Write and maintain core libraries (frame transformations, targeting and guidance, etc.) that all robotics platforms at Anduril will use -Own feature development and rollout for our products - recent examples include: building a Software-in-the-Loop simulator for our Tower product, writing an autofocus control system for cameras, creating a distributed over IPC coordinate frame library, redesigning the Pan-Tilt controls to accurately move heavy loads -Design, evaluate, and implement sensor integrations that support operation by both human and autonomous planning agents -Work closely with our hardware and manufacturing teams during product development, providing quick feedback that contributes to the final hardware design

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS -Strong engineering background from industry or school, ideally in areas/fields such as Robotics, Computer Science, Software Engineering, Mechatronics, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, or Physics -5+ years of C++ or Rust experience in a Linux development environment -Experience building software solutions involving significant amounts of data processing and analysis -Ability to quickly understand and navigate complex systems and established code bases -Must be eligible to obtain and hold a US DoD Security Clearance.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS -Experience in one or more of the following: motion planning, perception, localization, mapping, controls, and related system performance metrics. -Understanding of systems software (kernel, device drivers, system calls) and performance analysis

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 Mountain View, CA

Gatik is thrilled to be at CVPR! Come meet our team at booth 1831 to talk about how you could make an impact at the autonomous middle mile logistics company redefining the transportation landscape.

Who we are: Gatik, the leader in autonomous middle mile logistics, delivers goods safely and efficiently using its fleet of light & medium-duty trucks. The company focuses on short-haul, B2B logistics for Fortune 500 customers including Kroger, Walmart, Tyson Foods, Loblaw, Pitney Bowes, Georgia-Pacific, and KBX; enabling them to optimize their hub-and-spoke supply chain operations, enhance service levels and product flow across multiple locations while reducing labor costs and meeting an unprecedented expectation for faster deliveries. Gatik’s Class 3-7 autonomous box trucks are commercially deployed in multiple markets including Texas, Arkansas, and Ontario, Canada.

About the role:

We're currently looking for a tech lead with specialized skills in LiDAR, camera, and radar perception technologies to enhance our autonomous driving systems' ability to understand and interact with complex environments. In this pivotal role, you'll be instrumental in designing and refining the ML algorithms that enable our trucks to safely navigate and operate in complex, dynamic environments. You will collaborate with a team of experts in AI, robotics, and software engineering to push the boundaries of what's possible in autonomous trucking.

What you'll do: - Design and implement cutting-edge perception algorithms for autonomous vehicles, focusing on areas such as sensor fusion, 3D object detection, segmentation, and tracking in complex dynamic environments - Design and implement ML models for real-time perception tasks, leveraging deep neural networks to enhance the perception capabilities of self-driving trucks - Lead initiatives to collect, augment, and utilize large-scale datasets for training and validating perception models under various driving conditions - Develop robust testing and validation frameworks to ensure the reliability and safety of the perception systems across diverse scenarios and edge cases - Conduct field tests and simulations to validate and refine perception algorithms, ensuring robust performance in real-world trucking routes and conditions - Work closely with the data engineering team to build and maintain large-scale datasets for training and evaluating perception models, including the development of data augmentation techniques

**Please click on the Apply link below to see the full job description and apply.

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.

We are seeking a highly motivated candidate for a fully funded postdoctoral researcher position to work in 3D computer graphics and 3D computer vision.

The successful candidate will join the 3D Graphics and Vision research group led by Prof. Binh-Son Hua at the School of Computer Science and Statistics, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland to work on topics related to generative AI in the 3D domain. The School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College Dublin is a collegiate, friendly, and research-intensive centre for academic study and research excellence. The School has been ranked #1 in Ireland, top 25 in Europe, and top 100 Worldwide (QS Subject Rankings 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021).

The postdoctoral researcher is expected to conduct fundamental research and publish in top-tier computer vision and computer graphics conferences (CVPR, ECCV, ICCV, SIGGRAPH) and journals (TPAMI, IJCV). Other responsibilities include supporting graduate or undergraduate students with technical guidance and engagement in other research activities such as paper reviews, reading group, workshop organization, etc.

The start date of the position is August 01, 2024. Contract duration is 1 year with the option of renewing for a second year. The successful candidate will require the following skills and knowledge: • PhD in Computer Science or related fields; • Strong tracked records in 3D computer graphics, 3D computer vision; • Hands-on experience in training deep models and generative models is required; • Hands-on experience and relevant skills in computer graphics and computer vision application development such as OpenGL, OpenCV, CUDA, Blender is desirable; • Strong programming skills in C++, Python. Capability in implementing systems from research papers and open-source software. • Additional background in math, statistics, or physics is an advantage.

Applicants should provide the following information: • A comprehensive CV including a full list of publications; • The name and contact details of two referees. One of the referees should be the applicant’s PhD supervisor; • Two representative papers by the applicant. Interested candidates should email their applications to Binh-Son Hua (https://sonhua.github.io) directly. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis until the position has been filled.

Redmond, Washington, United States

Overview Microsoft Research (MSR) AI Frontiers lab is seeking applications for the position of Principal Researcher – Generative AI to join their team.

The mission of the AI Frontiers lab is to expand the pareto frontier of Artificial Intelligence (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) and Multi-Agent AI (e.g. AutoGen).

We are seeking a Principal Researcher – Generative AI to join our team and lead efforts on the advancement of Generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) technologies. As a Principal Researcher – Generative AI, you will play a crucial role in leading, 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 small language 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 LLMs to meet application-specific requirements Orchestration and multi-agent systems: automated orchestration between multiple agents incorporating human feedback and oversight

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.

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 You will perform cutting-edge research 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. Embody our culture and values.

Seattle, WA; Costa Mesa, CA; Boston, MA

Anduril Industries is a defense technology company with a mission to transform U.S. and allied military capabilities with advanced technology. By bringing the expertise, technology, and business model of the 21st century’s most innovative companies to the defense industry, Anduril is changing how military systems are designed, built and sold. Anduril’s family of systems is powered by Lattice OS, an AI-powered operating system that turns thousands of data streams into a realtime, 3D command and control center. As the world enters an era of strategic competition, Anduril is committed to bringing cutting-edge autonomy, AI, computer vision, sensor fusion, and networking technology to the military in months, not years.

THE ROLE We build Lattice, the foundation for everything we do as a defense technology company. Our engineers are talented and hard-working, motivated to see their work rapidly deployed on the front lines. Our team is not just building an experiment in waiting, we deploy what we build on the Southern border, Iraq, Ukraine and more.

We have open roles across Platform Engineering, ranging from core infrastructure to distributed systems, web development, networking and more. We hire self-motivated people, those who hold a higher bar for themselves than anyone else could hold for them. If you love building infrastructure, platform services, or just working in high performing engineering cultures we invite you to apply!

YOU SHOULD APPLY IF YOU: -At least 3+ years working with a variety of programming languages such as Rust, Go, C++, Java, Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, etc. -Have experience working with customers to deliver novel software capabilities -Want to work on building and integrating model/software/hardware-in-the-loop components by leveraging first and third party technologies (related to simulation, data management, compute infrastructure, networking, and more). -Love building platform and infrastructure tooling that enables other software engineers to scale their output -Enjoy collaborating with team members and partners in the autonomy domain, and building technologies and processes which enable users to safely and rapidly develop and deploy autonomous systems at scale. -Are a U.S. Person because of required access to U.S. export controlled information

Note: The above bullet points describe the ideal candidate. None of us matched all of these at once when we first joined Anduril. We encourage you to apply even if you believe you meet only part of our wish list.

NICE TO HAVE -You've built or invented something: an app, a website, game, startup -Previous experience working in an engineering setting: a startup (or startup-like environment), engineering school, etc. If you've succeeded in a low structure, high autonomy environment you'll succeed here! -Professional software development lifecycle experience using tools such as version control, CICD systems, etc. -A deep, demonstrated understanding of how computers and networks work, from a single desktop to a multi-cluster cloud node -Experience building scalable backend software systems with various data storage and processing requirements -Experience with industry standard cloud platforms (AWS, Azure), CI/CD tools, and software infrastructure fundamentals (networking, security, distributed systems) -Ability to quickly understand and navigate complex systems and established code bases -Experience implementing robot or autonomous vehicle testing frameworks in a software-in-the-loop or hardware-in-the-loop (HITL) environment -Experience with modern build and deployment tooling (e.g. NixOS, Terraform) -Experience designing complex software systems, and iterating upon designs via a technical design review process -Familiarity with industry standard monitoring, logging, and data management tools and best practices -A bias towards rapid delivery and iteration

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.

Location Seattle, WA

Description Futures Design is the advanced concept design and incubation team within Amazon’s Device and Services Design Group (DDG). We are responsible for exploring and defining think (very) big opportunities globally and locally — so that we can better understand how new products and services might enrich the lives of our customers and so that product teams and leaders can align on where we're going and why we're going there. We focus on a 3–10+ year time frame, with the runway to invent and design category-defining products and transformational customer experiences. Working with Amazon business and technology partners, we use research, design, and prototyping to guide early product development, bring greater clarity to engineering goals, and develop a UX-grounded point of view.

We're looking for a Principal Design Technologist to join the growing DDG Futures Design team. You thrive in ambiguity and paradigm shifts– remaking assumptions of how customers engage, devices operate, and builders create. You apply deep expertise that spans design, technology, and product, grounding state-of-the-art emerging technologies through storytelling and a maker mindset. You learn and adapt technology trends to enduring customer problems through customer empathy, code, and iterative experimentation.

You will wear multiple hats to quickly assimilate customer problems, convert them to hypotheses, and test them using efficient technologies and design methods to build stakeholder buy-in. You’ll help your peers unlock challenging scenarios and mature the design studio’s ability to deliver design at scale across a breadth of devices and interaction modalities. You will work around limitations and push capabilities through your work. Your curiosity will inspire those around you and facilitate team growth, while your hands-on, collaborative nature will build trust with your peers and studio partners.

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.