Social
pixie.jpg
Location: Princeton, NJ, USA
Faculty advisor: Sanjeev Arora

Pixie

We're an eclectic team of research-oriented undergraduate and graduate students in Princeton's CS and math departments.

By Princeton University
5 min read
Share

Individually, our specialties span a wide gamut, from machine learning theory to computer vision to distributed systems. We're united by a passion for the multifaceted field of artificial intelligence, and a vision of bringing change and surprise to the world through our research. Using a combination of tried-and- true techniques in natural language processing and freshly minted methods in deep learning, we hope to bring to you a socialbot that will understand and react to the social context, providing endless interesting and empathetic conversation.

Niranjani P. - Team leader

I'm a second year PhD student in Computer Science, advised by Professor Barbara Engelhardt. In 2013, I graduated from the University of Cambridge in Information and Computer Engineering (BA, MEng). Following that, I was with a start-up for two years, working on the research and development of speech recognition software. My current research interests are primarily in machine learning methods motivated by clinical medicine, spanning reinforcement learning, time series modelling, natural language processing and knowledge representation.

Alex B.

I'm a second year CS PhD student advised by Han Liu working on statistical learning and deep learning. At Princeton, I've worked on robustness of machine learners to attack (paper accepted at NIPS) and online hyperparameter optimization for deep networks. I also did a research internship at Google working on transfer learning for speech recognition with deep recurrent networks. Before Princeton I worked at Wynyard on stochastic process models of crime and distributed network security software for Apache Spark. My undergraduate research was on signal processing algorithms for ventilator management in the intensive care unit.

Ari S.

I'm a second year Computer Science PhD student working with Han Liu. I am interested in both general machine learning methodologies and applications in computer vision, robotics, and natural language processing. I am supported by an NDSEG Fellowship. Before Princeton I completed a research fellowship at the National Institutes of Health, focusing on computer-aided diagnostics. I developed software for automated detection of pathologies (e.g., enlarged lymph nodes, tumors) on CT and MRI images. Prior to NIH, I studied mathematics as an undergraduate at the University of Florida.

Cyril Z.

I'm a PhD student in Computer Science, studying algorithms and machine learning theory. I received my B.S. in Computer Science from Yale University, where I worked on fast Laplacian solvers, exoplanet physics, and various artsy things. I dream of uniting the beauty and rigor of theoretical computer science with the humanism and pragmatism of its applications.

Daniel S.

Daniel is a second-year graduate student working at the intersection of artificial intelligence and distributed systems. After receiving his bachelor's in Computer Science from Harvard, he spent five years in industry working on three-dimensional computer vision, constructing laser scanners with high dynamic range, and cluster computing on three-dimensional data. In the last year, he has built a robot that autonomously scans large indoor spaces in real time powered with a distributed computing back end. He was also on the MIT-Princeton team that took 3rd place at the 2016 Amazon Picking Challenge (top non-industry entrant). He currently works on deadline computing.

Davit B.

I graduated UCL majoring in Computer Science supervised by Prof. Lourdes Agapito. I developed Cyclop War during New Year's night. Launched multi-platform casual game Froo Zoo played by 100K users at age 17. At 18 I was featured by TechCrunch and started Newsly. At 19 I founded Cyclop. I am inspired by Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, DeepMind and the possible applications of Recurrent Neural Networks in vision. I am also co-founder Castly.tv, which is a video on demand platform that lets users sync-watch movies with friends and family. Started my PhD at 20.

Holden L.

I am a third-year PhD student advised by Sanjeev Arora. My research is on provable algorithms for machine learning, including areas such as neural networks, natural language processing, and reinforcement learning. I graduated with at B.Sc. in Mathematics from MIT in 2013 and M.A.St. in Mathematics from the University of Cambridge in 2014. My other interests include creative writing, teaching, science fiction, and rationality.

Jason G.

I majored in applied math and computer science in USTC between 2010 and 2014 and joined the Statistical Machine Learning (SMiLe) lab at Princeton in Sept. 2014 for graduate study under the supervision of Prof. Han Liu. I worked on CUDA programming for real time rendering algorithm in USTC. In the summer of 2013, I developed a set of computer vision toolkits for microscopy video archive processing while working as a research intern at the Oxford Center for Applied Math. My recent research focuses on automatic feature engineering and variable selection in the presence of heavy noise and multicolinearity.

Karan S.

I'm a second year Ph.D., advised by Prof. Elad Hazan. My research is focused on the design of interactive learning algorithms involving feedback-driven data collection. My recent work deals with complex, structured decision-making systems, involving partial feedback, ubiquitous in online advertising, clinical decision making. I graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in 2015 with the distinction of being awarded the President's Gold Medal for the best academic performance. In 2014, as a research intern at Microsoft Research, Redmond, I worked on Programming-by-Natural-Language techniques to translate natural language prompts into structured queries over knowledge bases.

Mikhail K.

I am an MSE student in the Department of Computer Science interested in developing algorithms and models for computational problems. My research has focused on machine learning, natural language processing, mathematical optimization, scientific computing, and partial differential equations. I received an A.B. in Mathematics with Honors from Princeton University in 2016. My thesis was supervised by Professor Sanjeev Arora.

Nikunj S.

I am a first year Masters student in the Computer Science department. I am interested in Machine Learning, deep learning and NLP.

Oluwatosin A.

I am currently a First-year Master's CS student. My undergraduate degree was in Electrical Engineering (summa cum laude) at The George Washington University. So the world of CS (especially AI) is relatively new to me. I find it interesting to learn about topics in different subject areas, and I am hoping to learn with and contribute to the Princeton team with my skills and persistence.

Sanjeev Arora - Faculty advisor

Professor of Computer Science, Princeton University. Interests include Theory, Algorithms, Machine Learning and NLP.

About the Author
Princeton University

Latest news

The latest updates, stories, and more about Alexa Prize.
Load more

Work with us

See more jobs See more jobs
Member of Technical Staff, ML Infra, AGI
US, CA, San Francisco
Are you interested in a unique opportunity to advance the accuracy and efficiency of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) systems? If so, you're at the right place! We are the AGI Autonomy organization, and we are looking for a driven and talented Member of Technical Staff to join us to build state-of-the art agents. As an MTS on our team, you will design, build, and maintain a Spark-based infrastructure to process and manage large datasets critical for machine learning research. You’ll work closely with our researchers to develop data workflows and tools that streamline the preparation and analysis of massive multimodal datasets, ensuring efficiency and scalability. We operate at Amazon's large scale with the energy of a nimble start-up. If you have a learner's mindset, enjoy solving challenging problems and value an inclusive and collaborative team culture, you will thrive in this role, and we hope to hear from you. Key job responsibilities * Develop and maintain reliable infrastructure to enable large-scale data extraction and transformation. * Work closely with researchers to create tooling for emerging data-related needs. * Manage project prioritization, deliverables, timelines, and stakeholder communication. * Illuminate trade-offs, educate the team on best practices, and influence technical strategy. * Operate in a dynamic environment to deliver high quality software.
Applied Scientist, FAR (Frontier AI & Robotics)
US, CA, San Francisco
Join the next revolution in robotics at Amazon's Frontier AI & Robotics team, where you'll work alongside world-renowned AI pioneers to push the boundaries of what's possible in robotic intelligence. As an Applied Scientist, you'll be at the forefront of developing breakthrough foundation models that enable robots to perceive, understand, and interact with the world in unprecedented ways. You'll drive independent research initiatives in areas such as perception, manipulation, science understanding, locomotion, manipulation, sim2real transfer, multi-modal foundation models and multi-task robot learning, designing novel frameworks that bridge the gap between state-of-the-art research and real-world deployment at Amazon scale. In this role, you'll balance innovative technical exploration with practical implementation, collaborating with platform teams to ensure your models and algorithms perform robustly in dynamic real-world environments. You'll have access to Amazon's vast computational resources, enabling you to tackle ambitious problems in areas like very large multi-modal robotic foundation models and efficient, promptable model architectures that can scale across diverse robotic applications. Key job responsibilities - Drive independent research initiatives across the robotics stack, including robotics foundation models, focusing on breakthrough approaches in perception, and manipulation, for example open-vocabulary panoptic scene understanding, scaling up multi-modal LLMs, sim2real/real2sim techniques, end-to-end vision-language-action models, efficient model inference, video tokenization - Design and implement novel deep learning architectures that push the boundaries of what robots can understand and accomplish - Lead full-stack robotics projects from conceptualization through deployment, taking a system-level approach that integrates hardware considerations with algorithmic development, ensuring robust performance in production environments - Collaborate with platform and hardware teams to ensure seamless integration across the entire robotics stack, optimizing and scaling models for real-world applications - Contribute to the team's technical strategy and help shape our approach to next-generation robotics challenges A day in the life - Design and implement novel foundation model architectures and innovative systems and algorithms, leveraging our extensive infrastructure to prototype and evaluate at scale - Collaborate with our world-class research team to solve complex technical challenges - Lead technical initiatives from conception to deployment, working closely with robotics engineers to integrate your solutions into production systems - Participate in technical discussions and brainstorming sessions with team leaders and fellow scientists - Leverage our massive compute cluster and extensive robotics infrastructure to rapidly prototype and validate new ideas - Transform theoretical insights into practical solutions that can handle the complexities of real-world robotics applications About the team At Frontier AI & Robotics, we're not just advancing robotics – we're reimagining it from the ground up. Our team is building the future of intelligent robotics through innovative foundation models and end-to-end learned systems. We tackle some of the most challenging problems in AI and robotics, from developing sophisticated perception systems to creating adaptive manipulation strategies that work in complex, real-world scenarios. What sets us apart is our unique combination of ambitious research vision and practical impact. We leverage Amazon's massive computational infrastructure and rich real-world datasets to train and deploy state-of-the-art foundation models. Our work spans the full spectrum of robotics intelligence – from multimodal perception using images, videos, and sensor data, to sophisticated manipulation strategies that can handle diverse real-world scenarios. We're building systems that don't just work in the lab, but scale to meet the demands of Amazon's global operations. Join us if you're excited about pushing the boundaries of what's possible in robotics, working with world-class researchers, and seeing your innovations deployed at unprecedented scale.
Sr. Applied Scientist, FAR (Frontier AI & Robotics)
US, CA, San Francisco
Join the next revolution in robotics at Amazon's Frontier AI & Robotics team, where you'll work alongside world-renowned AI pioneers to push the boundaries of what's possible in robotic intelligence. As a Senior Applied Scientist, you'll spearhead the development of breakthrough foundation models and full-stack robotics systems that enable robots to perceive, understand, and interact with the world in unprecedented ways. You'll drive technical excellence in areas such as perception, manipulation, science understanding, locomotion, manipulation, sim2real transfer, multi-modal foundation models and multi-task robot learning, designing novel frameworks that bridge the gap between state-of-the-art research and real-world deployment at Amazon scale. In this role, you'll combine hands-on technical work with scientific leadership, ensuring your team delivers robust solutions for dynamic real-world environments. You'll leverage Amazon's vast computational resources to tackle ambitious problems in areas like very large multi-modal robotic foundation models and efficient, promptable model architectures that can scale across diverse robotic applications. Key job responsibilities - Lead technical initiatives across the robotics stack, driving breakthrough approaches through hands-on research and development in areas including robotics foundation models, focusing on breakthrough approaches in perception, and manipulation, for example open-vocabulary panoptic scene understanding, scaling up multi-modal LLMs, sim2real/real2sim techniques, end-to-end vision-language-action models, efficient model inference, video tokenization - Guide technical direction for full-stack robotics projects from conceptualization through deployment, taking a system-level approach that integrates hardware considerations with algorithmic development, ensuring robust performance in production environments - Mentor fellow scientists while maintaining strong individual technical contributions - Collaborate with platform and hardware teams to ensure seamless integration across the entire robotics stack - Influence technical decisions and implementation strategies within your area of focus A day in the life - Design and implement novel foundation model architectures and innovative systems and algorithms, leveraging our extensive infrastructure to prototype and evaluate at scale - Guide fellow scientists in solving complex technical challenges across the full robotics stack - Lead focused technical initiatives from conception through deployment, ensuring successful integration with production systems - Drive technical discussions within your team and with key stakeholders - Conduct experiments and prototype new ideas using our massive compute cluster and extensive robotics infrastructure - Mentor team members while maintaining significant hands-on contribution to technical solutions About the team At Frontier AI & Robotics, we're not just advancing robotics – we're reimagining it from the ground up. Our team is building the future of intelligent robotics through innovative foundation models and end-to-end learned systems. We tackle some of the most challenging problems in AI and robotics, from developing sophisticated perception systems to creating adaptive manipulation strategies that work in complex, real-world scenarios. What sets us apart is our unique combination of ambitious research vision and practical impact. We leverage Amazon's massive computational infrastructure and rich real-world datasets to train and deploy state-of-the-art foundation models. Our work spans the full spectrum of robotics intelligence – from multimodal perception using images, videos, and sensor data, to sophisticated manipulation strategies that can handle diverse real-world scenarios. We're building systems that don't just work in the lab, but scale to meet the demands of Amazon's global operations. Join us if you're excited about pushing the boundaries of what's possible in robotics, working with world-class researchers, and seeing your innovations deployed at unprecedented scale.
Applied Scientist, Workforce Intelligence
CA, BC, Vancouver
Do you want a role with deep meaning and the ability to make a major impact? As part of Intelligent Talent Acquisition (ITA), you'll have the opportunity to reinvent the hiring process and deliver unprecedented scale, sophistication, and accuracy for Amazon Talent Acquisition operations. ITA is an industry-leading people science and technology organization made up of scientists, engineers, analysts, product professionals and more, all with the shared goal of connecting the right people to the right jobs in a way that is fair and precise. Last year we delivered over 6 million online candidate assessments, and helped Amazon deliver billions of packages around the world by making it possible to hire hundreds of thousands of workers in the right quantity, at the right location and at exactly the right time. You’ll work on state-of-the-art research, advanced software tools, new AI systems, and machine learning algorithms, leveraging Amazon's in-house tech stack to bring innovative solutions to life. Join ITA in using technologies to transform the hiring landscape and make a meaningful difference in people's lives. Together, we can solve the world's toughest hiring problems. Global Hiring Science owns and develops products and services using Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (ML) that enhance recruitment. We collaborate with scientists to build and maintain machine learning solutions for hiring, offering opportunities to both apply and develop ML engineering skills in a production environment. Key job responsibilities • Design and implement advanced AI models using the latest LLM and GenAI technologies to develop fair and accurate machine learning models for hiring. • Clearly and cogently present your work and ideas, and respond effectively to feedback. • Collaborate with cross-functional teams with Research Scientists and Software Engineers to integrate AI-driven products into Amazon’s hiring process. • Stay at the advance of AI research, continuously exploring and implementing new techniques in NLP, LLMs, and GenAI to drive innovation in hiring. • Implement advanced natural language processing models to extract insights from diverse data sources. • Ensure effective teamwork, communication, collaboration, and commitment across multiple teams with competing priorities. • Contribute to the scientific community through publications, presentations, and collaborations with academic institutions. About the team The mission of Global Hiring Science (GHS) is to improve both the efficiency and effectiveness of hiring across Amazon with assessments and interview improvements. We are a team of experts in machine learning, industrial-organizational psychology, data science, and measuring the knowledge, skills, and abilities that it takes to be successful at Amazon.
Member of Technical Staff, AGI Autonomy
US, CA, San Francisco
Amazon has launched a new research lab in San Francisco to develop foundational capabilities for useful AI agents. We’re enabling practical AI to make our customers more productive, empowered, and fulfilled. In particular, our work combines large language models (LLMs) with reinforcement learning (RL) to solve reasoning, planning, and world modeling in both virtual and physical environments. Our research builds on that of Amazon’s broader AGI organization, which recently introduced Amazon Nova, a new generation of state-of-the-art foundation models (FMs). Our lab is a small, talent-dense team with the resources and scale of Amazon. Each team in the lab has the autonomy to move fast and the long-term commitment to pursue high-risk, high-payoff research. We’re entering an exciting new era where agents can redefine what AI makes possible. We’d love for you to join our lab and build it from the ground up! Key job responsibilities You will contribute directly to AI agent development in an applied research role, including model training, dataset design, and pre- and post-training optimization. You will be hired as a Member of Technical Staff.
Economist, People Experience and Technology Central Science
US, WA, Seattle
PXTCS is looking for an economist who can apply economic methods to address business problems. The ideal candidate will work with engineers and computer scientists to estimate models and algorithms on large scale data, design pilots and measure impact, and transform successful prototypes into improved policies and programs at scale. PXTCS is looking for creative thinkers who can combine a strong technical economic toolbox with a desire to learn from other disciplines, and who know how to execute and deliver on big ideas as part of an interdisciplinary technical team. Ideal candidates will work in a team setting with individuals from diverse disciplines and backgrounds. They will work with teammates to develop scientific models and conduct the data analysis, modeling, and experimentation that is necessary for estimating and validating models. They will work closely with engineering teams to develop scalable data resources to support rapid insights, and take successful models and findings into production as new products and services. They will be customer-centric and will communicate scientific approaches and findings to business leaders, listening to and incorporate their feedback, and delivering successful scientific solutions. A day in the life The Economist will work with teammates to apply economic methods to business problems. This might include identifying the appropriate research questions, writing code to implement a DID analysis or estimate a structural model, or writing and presenting a document with findings to business leaders. Our economists also collaborate with partner teams throughout the process, from understanding their challenges, to developing a research agenda that will address those challenges, to help them implement solutions. About the team The People eXperience and Technology Central Science (PXTCS) team uses economics, behavioral science, statistics, and machine learning to proactively identify mechanisms and process improvements which simultaneously improve Amazon and the lives, wellbeing, and the value of work to Amazonians. PXTCS is an interdisciplinary team that combines the talents of science and engineering to develop and deliver solutions that measurably achieve this goal.
Executive Assistant, AGI
US, CA, San Francisco
The Amazon General Intelligence “AGI” organization is looking for an Executive Assistant to support leaders of our Autonomy Team in our growing AI Lab space located in San Francisco. This role is ideal for exceptionally talented, dependable, customer-obsessed, and self-motivated individuals eager to work in a fast paced, exciting and growing team. This role serves as a strategic business partner, managing complex executive operations across the AGI organization. The position requires superior attention to detail, ability to meet tight deadlines, excellent organizational skills, and juggling multiple critical requests while proactively anticipating needs and driving improvements. High integrity, discretion with confidential information, and professionalism are essential. The successful candidate will complete complex tasks and projects quickly with minimal guidance, react with appropriate urgency, and take effective action while navigating ambiguity. Flexibility to change direction at a moment's notice is critical for success in this role. Key job responsibilities - Serve as strategic partner to senior leadership, identifying opportunities to improve organizational effectiveness and drive operational excellence - Manage complex calendars and scheduling for multiple executives - Drive continuous improvement through process optimization and new mechanisms - Coordinate team activities including staff meetings, offsites, and events - Schedule and manage cost-effective travel - Attend key meetings, track deliverables, and ensure timely follow-up - Create expense reports and manage budget tracking - Serve as liaison between executives and internal/external stakeholders - Build collaborative relationships with Executive Assistants across the company and with critical external partners - Help us build a great team culture in the SF Lab!
Principal Applied Scientist, Amazon
US, NY, New York
Amazon is investing heavily in building a world class advertising business and we are responsible for defining and delivering a collection of self-service performance advertising products that drive discovery and sales. Our products are strategically important to our Retail and Marketplace businesses driving long term growth. We deliver billions of ad impressions and millions of clicks daily and are breaking fresh ground to create world-class products. We are highly motivated, collaborative and fun-loving with an entrepreneurial spirit and bias for action. With a broad mandate to experiment and innovate, we are growing at an unprecedented rate with a seemingly endless range of new opportunities. The Ad Response Prediction team in the Sponsored Products organization builds GenAI-based shopper understanding and audience targeting systems, along with advanced deep-learning models for Click-through Rate (CTR) and Conversion Rate (CVR) predictions. We develop large-scale machine-learning (ML) pipelines and real-time serving infrastructure to match shoppers' intent with relevant ads across all devices, contexts, and marketplaces. Through precise estimation of shoppers' interactions with ads and their long-term value, we aim to drive optimal ad allocation and pricing, helping to deliver a relevant, engaging, and delightful advertising experience to Amazon shoppers. As our business grows and we undertake increasingly complex initiatives, we are looking for entrepreneurial, and self-driven science leaders to join our team. Key job responsibilities As a Principal Applied Scientist in the team, you will: * Seek to understand in depth the Sponsored Products offering at Amazon and identify areas of opportunities to grow our business via principled ML solutions. * Mentor and guide the applied scientists in our organization and hold us to a high standard of technical rigor and excellence in ML. * Design and lead organization wide ML roadmaps to help our Amazon shoppers have a delightful shopping experience while creating long term value for our sellers. * Work with our engineering partners and draw upon your experience to meet latency and other system constraints. * Identify untapped, high-risk technical and scientific directions, and simulate new research directions that you will drive to completion and deliver. * Be responsible for communicating our ML innovations to the broader internal & external scientific community.
Member of Technical Staff, Data Platform, AGI
US, CA, San Francisco
Amazon AGI Autonomy develops foundational capabilities for useful AI agents. We are the research lab behind Amazon Nova Act, a state-of-the-art computer-use agent. Our work combines Large Language Models (LLMs) with Reinforcement Learning (RL) to solve reasoning, planning, and world modeling in the virtual world. We are a small, talent-dense team with the autonomy to move fast and the long-term commitment to pursue high-risk, high-payoff research. Come be a part of our journey! --- About the team We’re looking for a generalist software engineer to build and evolve our internal data platform. The team builds data-intensive services that ingest, process, store, and distribute multi-modal training data across multiple internal and external sources. This work emphasizes data integrity, reliability, and extensibility in support of large-scale training and experimentation workloads. The team also builds and maintains APIs and SDKs that enable product engineers and researchers to build on top of the platform. As research directions change, so does our data, and today the team is focused on hardening the platform to reliably deliver an evolving set of data schemas, sources, and modalities. By building strong foundations and durable abstractions, we aim to enable new kinds of tooling and workflows over time. The team will play a key role in shaping them as the research evolves. --- Key job responsibilities * Build and operate reliable, performant backend and data platform services that support continuous ingestion and use of multi-modal training data. * Identify and implement opportunities to accelerate data generation, validation, and usage across training and evaluation workflows from multiple internal and external sources. * Partner closely with Human Feedback, Data Generation, Product Engineering, and Research teams to evolve and scale the data platform, APIs, and SDKs. * Own projects end to end, from technical design and implementation through deployment, observability, and long-term maintainability. * Write clear technical documentation and communicate design decisions and tradeoffs to stakeholders across multiple teams. * Raise the team’s technical aptitude through thoughtful code reviews, knowledge sharing, and mentorship.
Applied Scientist II, Last Mile Science
IN, KA, Bangalore
Have you ever ordered a product on Amazon and when that box with the smile arrived you wondered how it got to you so fast? Have you wondered where it came from and how much it cost Amazon to deliver it to you? If so, the WW Amazon Logistics, Business Analytics team is for you. We manage the delivery of tens of millions of products every week to Amazon’s customers, achieving on-time delivery in a cost-effective manner. We are looking for an enthusiastic, customer obsessed, Applied Scientist with good analytical skills to help manage projects and operations, implement scheduling solutions, improve metrics, and develop scalable processes and tools. The primary role of an Operations Research Scientist within Amazon is to address business challenges through building a compelling case, and using data to influence change across the organization. This individual will be given responsibility on their first day to own those business challenges and the autonomy to think strategically and make data driven decisions. Decisions and tools made in this role will have significant impact to the customer experience, as it will have a major impact on how the final phase of delivery is done at Amazon. Candidates will be a high potential, strategic and analytic graduate with a PhD in (Operations Research, Statistics, Engineering, and Supply Chain) ready for challenging opportunities in the core of our world class operations space. Great candidates have a history of operations research, and the ability to use data and research to make changes. This role requires robust program management skills and research science skills in order to act on research outcomes. This individual will need to be able to work with a team, but also be comfortable making decisions independently, in what is often times an ambiguous environment. Responsibilities may include: - Develop input and assumptions based preexisting models to estimate the costs and savings opportunities associated with varying levels of network growth and operations - Creating metrics to measure business performance, identify root causes and trends, and prescribe action plans - Managing multiple projects simultaneously - Working with technology teams and product managers to develop new tools and systems to support the growth of the business - Communicating with and supporting various internal stakeholders and external audiences
See more jobs
View from space of a connected network around planet Earth representing the Internet of Things.
Get more from Amazon Science
Subscribe to our monthly newsletter

Amazon.com | Conditions of Use | Privacy | © 1996-2026 Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates

Social