Postdoctoral Scholar - Reinhart Group - Materials Science and Engineering (machine learning for autonomous thin-film synthesis)

Penn State's Department of Materials Science and Engineering seeks a postdoctoral scholar in machine learning for autonomous thin-film materials synthesis, within LATTICE (Layered and Thin Film Technologies with Intelligent Cloud Experimentation), an NSF Programmable Cloud Laboratory at University Park. The scholar develops models for representation learning on scientific data, multimodal data fusion and real-time prediction that let AI systems interpret data from atomic force microscopy, reflection high-energy electron diffraction, spectroscopic ellipsometry, X-ray diffraction and similar methods.

These models form the perceptual layer of a multi-agent AI framework that guides autonomous synthesis and interacts with robotic systems; they are trained and validated on LATTICE instrument data, deployed on edge computing for real-time feedback during deposition and integrated with the Lifetime Sample Tracking platform, in close collaboration with thin-film scientists and AI researchers.

PhD in materials science and engineering, computer science, electrical engineering, physics or a related field, with a strong research record in machine learning for scientific data.