Southern California HERC

Position Summary
The James Silberrad Brown Center for Artificial Intelligence (JSB AI Center) seeks a full-time Research Fellow to play a central role in advancing its interdisciplinary AI research agenda. This position is designed for a technically strong researcher who can provide leadership and continuity across multi-stage research projects while contributing to the Center's long-term growth and external funding strategy.

The JSB AI Center brings together faculty, students, and collaborators from business, information systems, engineering, computer science, communication, psychology, and related fields. Research areas include foundation models, multimodal learning, social robotics, AI for education and healthcare, behavior modeling, and trustworthy human-AI interaction. The Center's mission is to connect cutting-edge AI innovation with meaningful applications in business, management, health, and society.

The Research Fellow will lead and contribute to collaborative research streams while developing an independent research program aligned with Center priorities. This role includes managing experimental design and execution, contributing to high-impact publications, mentoring students, and playing a significant role in external grant development.

Key Responsibilities
Research Leadership

• Design and lead independent and collaborative research projects in multimodal AI, foundation models, social robotics, and applied AI.
• Develop and manage experiments using the Center's high-performance computing systems with clear documentation and reproducible workflows.
• Contribute to model development integrating audio, vision, language, and sensor data for embodied and socially intelligent systems.
• Drive publication output from concept development through submission to leading venues.

Grant Development & Program Growth

• Co-lead development of federal, foundation, and industry grant proposals, including technical narratives, research design, and budgets.
• Support grant reporting, deliverables tracking, and coordination across interdisciplinary teams.
• Strengthen the Center's long-term research capacity through sustained external funding efforts.

Mentorship & Collaboration

• Mentor undergraduate and graduate students in experiment design, technical implementation, and scientific writing.
• Facilitate collaboration across modeling, robotics, information systems, and applied research teams.
• Coordinate with engineering partners to ensure research outputs support real-world deployment.

Dissemination & Impact

• Publish in leading AI, technical, and business journals and conferences.
• Present research to academic, industry, and community audiences.
• Contribute to applied research partnerships in education, healthcare, and community settings.

This is a full-time (1.0 time-base), benefits eligible, temporary position. The duration of the fellowship is one year. This position is designated as exempt under FLSA and is not eligible for overtime compensation.

Department Summary
The JSB AI Center maintains a high-performance computing environment that includes GPU clusters, large-memory servers, and an NVIDIA DGX B200 system. These resources support the training of large multimodal models involving audio, video, language, nonverbal behavior, affective features, facial expressions, movement, and other sensor data. Experience with multi-GPU training, distributed computing, and efficient experiment management is important for this role.

The JSB AI Center's computing infrastructure supports research on socially intelligent robots, multimodal behavior modeling, education and healthcare support systems, and other AI applications that involve adaptive, context-sensitive interaction. Current projects include behavioral modeling for mental health indicators, educational support through goal-directed robot communication, self-supervised speech and audio modeling, and the development of robots capable of interpreting and responding to verbal and nonverbal signals.

For more information regarding the James Silberrad Brown Center for AI, click here.

Education and Experience

• Ph.D. in Management Information Systems, Computer Science, Engineering, Robotics, Cognitive Science, or a related field (completed or expected within six months of start date)

Key Qualifications

• Experience with deep learning frameworks, especially PyTorch, and with high-performance computing environments
• Experience with multi-GPU training and distributed computing workflows
• Evidence of peer-reviewed publications or manuscripts under review
• Strong research writing skills and experience contributing to manuscripts or proposals
• Commitment to collaboration, student mentorship, and active engagement in daily JSB AI Center activities
• Experience with multimodal learning, vision-language models, audio or speech processing, or large language models is preferred.
• Familiarity with fine-tuning methods such as LoRA, PEFT, and QLoRA, and with experiment tracking tools such as Weights and Biases or MLflow is preferred.
• Background in AI for education, healthcare, mental health, or social behavior modeling is preferred.
• Experience with self-supervised learning approaches, including contrastive learning or masked prediction methods is preferred.
• A track record of contributing to successful grant proposals is preferred.
• Experience mentoring or coordinating student research teams is preferred.

Compensation and Benefits
Anticipated hiring range: $65,000-$67,500
Salary placement is determined by the education, experience, and qualifications the candidate brings to the position, internal equity, and the hiring department's fiscal resources.

San Diego State University offers a rich benefits package that constitutes a major portion of total compensation. For more information regarding SDSU benefits, please click here.

Full Benefits Package Includes:

• Generous Time Off: 15 paid holidays, vacation, and sick leave.
• Retirement: CalPERS pension plan with retiree healthcare, and reciprocal agreements with other California public retirement systems, including the UC.
• Health Coverage: Medical, dental, and vision options at low or no cost.
• Education Support: CSU tuition fee waiver for employees and eligible dependents.
• Optional Offerings: FlexCash, life and disability insurance, legal and pet plans.
• Campus & Community: Access to the library, campus events, employee groups, and volunteer and social activities.

SDSU Values
At SDSU, our diversity gives us power and benefits every single member of our community.  Consistent with California law and federal civil rights laws, SDSU provides equal opportunity for all in education and employment.  We encourage all members of our community to purposefully learn from one another through open and respectful dialogue and responsible engagement. We strongly preserve the right to free expression and encourage difficult conversations that help lead to improved individual and community learning and cohesion.

Principles of Community

At San Diego State University, we are a community of diverse individuals who have and represent many perspectives, beliefs, and identities. This diversity lends our community strength, and we commit to creating and sustaining an inclusive and intellectually vibrant environment that benefits all members of our university. 

SDSU's Principles of Community is an aspirational statement that is intended to evolve over time. The statement reflects the ideals we are encouraged to uphold in our interactions with one another. 

Equal Opportunity and Excellence in Education and Employment
All university programs and activities are open and available to all regardless of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin. Consistent with California law and federal civil rights laws, San Diego State University (SDSU) provides equal opportunity in education and employment without unlawful discrimination or preferential treatment based on race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin. Our commitment to equal opportunity means ensuring that every student and employee has access to the resources and support they need to thrive and succeed in a university environment and in their communities. SDSU complies with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, the California Equity in Higher Education Act, California's Proposition 209 (Art. I, Section 31 of the California Constitution), other applicable state and federal anti-discrimination laws, and CSU's Nondiscrimination Policy. We prohibit discriminatory preferential treatment, segregation based on race or any other protected status, and all forms of discrimination, harassment, and retaliation in all university programs, policies, and practices. 

SDSU is a diverse community of individuals who represent many perspectives, beliefs and identities, committed to fostering an inclusive, respectful, and intellectually vibrant environment. We cultivate a culture of open dialogue, mutual respect, and belonging to support educational excellence and student success. Through academic programs, student organizations and activities, faculty initiatives, and community partnerships, we encourage meaningful engagement with diverse perspectives. As a higher education institution, we are dedicated to advancing knowledge and empowering individuals to reach their full potential by prioritizing inclusive curriculum development, faculty and staff training, student mentorship, and comprehensive support programs. At SDSU, excellence is built on merit, talent, diversity, accessibility, and equal opportunity for all.

Supplemental Information
Review of the required application materials will be ongoing and the position will remain open until filled.

The following documents will be required:

•  Cover letter describing your research background, relevant experience, and interest in this position
•  Curriculum vitae with complete publication list
• Two representative publications or preprints
•  Brief research statement (two page maximum) outlining possible research directions
• Contact information for three references

The person holding this position is considered a mandated reporter' under the California Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting Act and is required to comply with the requirements set forth in CSU Executive Order 1083 as a condition of employment.

A background check (including a criminal records check) must be completed satisfactorily and is required for employment. SDSU will make a conditional offer of employment, which may be rescinded if the background check reveals disqualifying information, and/or it is discovered that the candidate knowingly withheld or falsified information. Failure to satisfactorily complete the background check may affect the continued employment of a current SDSU employee who was conditionally offered the position.

SDSU is a smoke-free campus. For more information, please click here.

Reasonable accommodations will be provided for qualified applicants with disabilities who request an accommodation by contacting Taylor Smith at tjaress@sdsu.edu.