Schmidt Postdoc Fellows
Program Description
Cornell University hosts the Eric and Wendy Schmidt AI in Science Postdoctoral Fellowship, a program of Schmidt Futures. This program supports collaborative research projects using AI to accelerate scientific discovery. Postdocs will engage in a variety of research, training, and learning opportunities to advance broad and deep adoption of AI tools across multiple scientific domains. Postdocs will become part of a global network of AI-trained researchers and be at the forefront of AI-led scientific innovation. The Cornell program will span 6 years, with the first cohort of ten postdocs in different scientific domains for the 2022–2023 academic year already selected. Cornell will then host 20 postdocs a year, for the next five years.
Research Themes
The initial research themes identified for the fellowship program at CUAISci include, but are not limited to, the following:
AI for Materials Discovery
New materials have the potential to spark innovation and transform engineering progress. AI has the ability to accelerate materials discovery through AI-guided robotic scientific experimentation, interpretation of highly complex experimental data, and molecular design and synthesis, among others.
AI for Physics
AI has the ability to lead the big data revolution in areas such as quantum matter and astronomy, leading to potential increases in data resolution and a better understanding of such complex data.
AI for the Biological Sciences
The biological sciences provide a wealth of opportunities for transdisciplinary AI research. Such areas ripe for investigation include disentangling complex genomic data sets, diagnosing human disease, predicting pest outbreaks, deep brain imaging, and multi-scale production modeling.
AI for the Sustainability Sciences
AI provides new data analysis and interpretation techniques to help us protect our planet and increase the efficiency of resource use. Applications include but are not limited to, designing biodiversity responses to climate change, optimizing clean energy projects, and modeling ecosystem services.
Postdoc Opportunities
Ten science postdocs (2023 cohort)
We are recruiting ten postdocs in a scientific domain whose primary discipline and mentor is in STEM but not in computer science, operations research, or applied mathematics. For more information, see the science postdoc opening page.
One or two computer science postdocs (2023)
We are recruiting one or two postdocs in computer science with a focus on AI for science. For more information, see the computer science postdoc opening page.