Human Interactive Driving Intern - World Models at Toyota… · Los Altos

Summary: Toyota Research Institute is advancing AI, robotics, autonomous driving, and related technologies to improve the quality of human life. The Ph.D. Research Intern will conduct original research in machine learning and autonomous driving, develop and evaluate world-model and driving-system prototypes, collaborate with researchers, and contribute to research publications.

Responsibilities:
- Conduct original research in one or more areas: world modeling, multi-agent interaction, reinforcement learning, perception, or simulation-to-reality transfer
- Collaborate closely with full-time researchers on the design, training, and evaluation of learning-based driving systems
- Contribute to building and experimenting with task-aware, multi-modal, and uncertainty-aware models
- Develop and evaluate prototypes in closed-loop simulation environments and, time permitting, on high-performance autonomous driving hardware
- Present research findings through internal talks and work towards a top-tier academic publication
- Integrate and work with large-scale datasets (open-source and internal)

Required Qualifications:
- Currently enrolled in a Ph.D. program in Computer Science, Robotics, Machine Learning, or a related field
- Strong background in machine learning, particularly in areas such as deep learning, generative models, reinforcement learning, or probabilistic modeling
- Demonstrated experience with one or more of the following: World models (e.g., latent dynamics, diffusion-based models), Model-based RL or decision-making, 3D perception or sensor fusion, and Large-scale simulation for robotics or autonomous systems
- Prior publication(s) in top-tier conferences (NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML, CVPR, ICRA, CoRL, etc.)
- Proficiency with Python and PyTorch

Preferred Qualifications:
- Applicants with relevant publications in the fields above and good collaboration skills are highly encouraged to apply
- Familiarity with AWS services (S3, EC2, and SageMaker) and open-source driving datasets (nuScenes, Waymo, Argoverse, etc.) is a plus

Required Skills: Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Generative Models, Reinforcement Learning, Probabilistic Modeling, World Models, Model-Based Reinforcement Learning, 3D Perception, Sensor Fusion, Large-Scale Simulation, Python, PyTorch

Benefits: This is a paid 12-week internship opportunity., Hybrid, in-office role., Medical, dental, and vision insurance., Paid time off benefits, including holiday pay and sick time.