Senior/ Staff Research Scientist, Generative AI x Science

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative was founded by Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg in 2015 to help solve some of society’s toughest challenges — from eradicating disease and improving education to addressing the needs of our local communities. Our mission is to build a more inclusive, just, and healthy future for everyone.

The Team

CZI supports the science and technology that will make it possible to cure, prevent, or manage all diseases by the end of this century. While this may seem like an audacious goal, in the last 100 years, biomedical science has made tremendous strides in understanding biological systems, advancing human health, and treating disease. 

We build open source software tools and leverage artificial intelligence to accelerate the pace of biomedicine. We fund scientific research worldwide to advance the frontiers of knowledge. And we launched a family of institutes to do research that can’t be done in conventional environments. Each aspect is essential to our approach to building for the long term.

CZI’s work in science includes grantmaking programs, open-source software development, and close collaboration with its partner institutes at the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Network. The CZ Biohub Network includes the San Francisco, Chicago, and New York Biohubs as well as the Chan Zuckerberg Imaging Institute. CZI also collaborates with institutional partners like the Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural & Artificial Intelligence at Harvard University. Join us in accelerating science.

The AI/ML team is funding and building one of the largest computing systems dedicated to nonprofit life science research in the world. This new effort will provide the scientific community with access to predictive models of healthy and diseased cells, which will lead to groundbreaking new discoveries that could help researchers cure, prevent, or manage all diseases by the end of this century.

The Opportunity

As a Senior/Staff Research Scientist on the AI/ML team you will conduct original research in developing state-of-the-art methods in artificial intelligence and machine learning to solve important problems in the life sciences aligned with CZI’s mission. The era of big data in biology is upon us, driven by advancements in high-throughput measurement techniques, generating vast amounts of rich multimodal data. You will work as part of a diverse team of AI scientists and engineers leveraging large multimodal datasets to build foundation models that advance both the state-of-the-art in AI as well as our understanding of biological systems. You will also have the opportunity to work on aspects of AI for scientific discovery to build systems that embed AI systems deeply into the process of proposing and generating new scientific insights and reify existing ones into scalable systems.

You will have the opportunity to work closely with teams of scientists, computational biologists, and engineers within CZI and to collaborate with CZI grantees, CZ institutes, and other external labs and organizations. Your work will inspire and enhance the production and analysis of datasets by CZ teams and collaborators. 

What You'll Do

• Conduct original research in the area of generative multimodal modeling, large language models (LLMs), diffusion models, probabilistic reasoning and causality/causal representation learning as it applies to fundamental problems in AI for advancing the sciences. 
• Build, train, and evaluate multimodal foundation models utilizing CZI’s 1000xH100 GPU compute cluster and distributed training infrastructure. 
• Work with a diverse range of multimodal and biological data types, including multi-omics data, cell/tissue images, human specimen/cohort data, cryoET tomography, scientific literature, and more. 
• Advance the community standards for dissemination, presentation, and evaluation of computational approaches to core scientific problems.
• Contribute to the scientific community through publishing papers, blog posts, open source code, and attending conferences in machine learning and the life sciences.

What You'll Bring

• Enjoy working in a highly interactive and cross-functional collaborative environment with a diverse team of colleagues and partners.
• Have a PhD or Masters in machine learning, computer science, math/statistics or a related field or equivalent industry experience.
• Have at least 6-8 years of experience developing and applying AI/ML methods in industry and/or academia. 
• Have demonstrated experience building and training deep learning/generative models, ideally in a distributed/multi-node environment.
• Experience working with, processing, and analyzing large datasets and building data pipelines for model training. 
• A good working knowledge of Python-based ML libraries and frameworks such as PyTorch, Jax, Pyro, NumPy, and Pandas.
• Have the ability to work independently and as part of a team, and have excellent communication and interpersonal skills.
• Have a proven track record of relevant research publications, preprints, or software packages.
• An appetite for turning scientific problems into reproducible, rigorously engineered systems based on quantitative evaluation
• Enthusiasm about open science and helping usher in the age of generative AI for advancing science

Compensation

The Redwood City, CA base pay range for this role is $190,000- $285,000 (Senior) or $214,000 - $321,000 (Staff). New hires are typically hired into the lower portion of the range, enabling employee growth in the range over time. Actual placement in range is based on job-related skills and experience, as evaluated throughout the interview process. Pay ranges outside Redwood City are adjusted based on cost of labor in each respective geographical market. Your recruiter can share more about the specific pay range for your location during the hiring process.

Benefits for the Whole You 

We’re thankful to have an incredible team behind our work. To honor their commitment, we offer a wide range of benefits to support the people who make all we do possible. 

• CZI provides a generous 100% match on employee 401(k) contributions to support planning for the future. 
• Annual funding for employees that can be used most meaningfully for them and their families, such as housing, student loan repayment, childcare, commuter costs, or other life needs.
• CZI Life of Service Gifts are awarded to employees to “live the mission” and support the causes closest to them.
• Paid time off to volunteer at an organization of your choice. 
• Funding for select family-forming benefits. 
• Relocation support for employees who need assistance moving to the Bay Area
• And more!

Commitment to Diversity

We believe that the strongest teams and best thinking are defined by the diversity of voices at the table. We are committed to fair treatment and equal access to opportunity for all CZI team members and to maintaining a workplace where everyone feels welcomed, respected, supported, and valued. Learn about our diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. 

If you’re interested in a role but your previous experience doesn’t perfectly align with each qualification in the job description, we still encourage you to apply as you may be the perfect fit for this or another role.

Explore our work modes, benefits, and interview process at www.chanzuckerberg.com/careers.

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