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A grid shows images from the top Amazon Science articles of 2021, the year 2021 can be seen in an overlay
These are images from some of the most engaging stories published on Amazon Science in 2021.

The top Amazon Science articles of 2021

From quantum chess to robot arms to body fat percentage and ML-powered grocery shopping, these 10 articles resonated with readers in 2021.

By Staff writer
December 28, 2021
2 min read
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  1. An Amazon quantum computing scientist wins the first-ever quantum chess tournament
    A picture of Aleksander Kubica
    Aleksander Kubica, research scientist with the AWS quantum computing team
    Credit: Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics

    Not only did Aleksander Kubica, a research scientist with the AWS quantum computing team, win the first-ever tournament, he did so having played quantum chess only once — the weekend before the event. Learn about his strategy and watch video from two of his historic matches.

  2. A conversation with Michael I. Jordan, Michael Kearns, and Bernhard Schölkopf
    Larry Hardesty, the Amazon Science blog editor, interviewed Amazon distinguished scientist Bernhard Schölkopf (top right) and Amazon Scholars Michael Kearns (bottom left) and Michael I. Jordan (bottom right).
    Larry Hardesty, the Amazon Science blog editor, interviewed Amazon distinguished scientist Bernhard Schölkopf (top right) and Amazon Scholars Michael Kearns (bottom left) and Michael I. Jordan (bottom right).

    On the cusp of the 2021 NeurIPS conference, the three Amazon-affiliated researchers — all of whom have given the conference’s major named lecture, the Posner lecture — talked about the accelerating interesting in machine learning, its implications for both tech and AI research, and the path forward for AI.

  3. Graceful AI
    Stefano 2.jpg
    Stefano Soatto, vice president of applied science for AWS AI.
    Credit: Todd Cheney

    Stefano Soatto, vice president of applied science for AWS AI, writes, "As machine-learning-based decision systems improve rapidly, we are discovering that it is no longer enough for them to perform well on their own. They should also behave nicely toward their predecessors. When we replace an old trained classifier with a new one, we should expect a smooth transition and a peaceful transfer of decision powers."

  4. A look at the science that powers Amazon's advanced robot arms
    A close up of the Robin robotic arm
    Robin must calculate how to identify, move, and sort parcels that may rest atop one another as they are presented via a conveyor.
    Credit F4D Studio

    Robin, one of the most complex stationary robot arm systems Amazon has ever built, brings many core technologies to new levels and acts as a glimpse into the possibilities of combining vision, package manipulation and machine learning. Learn what separates them from more traditional robot arms — and watch them in action.

  5. Why now is a 'particularly good time' to explore careers in robotics
    A split screen screengrab from a video interview shows Siddhartha Srinivasa, left, director of Amazon Robotics AI, and Nia Jetter, Amazon Robotics AI senior principal technologist, right
    Siddhartha Srinivasa, left, director of Amazon Robotics AI, and Nia Jetter, Amazon Robotics AI senior principal technologist

    In a video interview, Siddhartha Srinivasa, director of Amazon Robotics AI, and Nia Jetter, Amazon Robotics AI senior principal technologist, discuss inspiration, their roles at Amazon, and tips for pursuing a robotics career. Watch their informative and illuminating discussion about careers in robotics.

  6. A computer vision system that can accurately predict body fat percentage
    Halo App Body Feature2.png
    With Amazon Halo's Body feature, individuals can measure their own body fat percentage and track it through a personalized 3D model.

    A team of Amazon scientists discusses the challenges in developing a system that can accurately estimate body fat percentage and create personalized 3D avatars of users from smartphone photos. Learn how they utilized convolutional neural networks, and semi-supervised learning.

  7. ARA recipient aims to unite the deep learning community
    Michael Bronstein, the chair in Machine Learning and Pattern Recognition in the Department of Computing at Imperial College London
    Michael Bronstein, an Amazon Research Awards (ARA) recipient, is also the chair in Machine Learning and Pattern Recognition in the Department of Computing at Imperial College London
    Dino Dimopoulos

    Michael Bronstein, the chair in Machine Learning and Pattern Recognition in the Department of Computing at Imperial College London, is using pioneering machine learning to push the boundaries of drug design, among other things — including unifing the machine learning “zoo”.

  8. The science of operations planning under uncertainty
    An Amazon employee is seen making a delivery while an electric delivery van is parked behind him on a residential street in Los Angeles
    An Amazon employee is seen making a delivery while an electric delivery van is parked behind him on a residential street in Los Angeles
    About Amazon

    When Amazon announced it would purchase 100,000 custom electric delivery vehicles as part of The Climate Pledge, a team of scientists within the Amazon Logistics (AMZL) Research organization took on the challenge of determining the best strategy for deploying them. Based on sophisticated models that simulate Amazon’s shipments and external parameters like power availability in each city, the team is developing a plan to gradually electrify Amazon’s entire fleet.

  9. How machine learning is helping Amazon improve the grocery shopping experience
    Amazon Fresh Prime bag
    From forecasting to selection, Amazon Fresh scientists are developing machine learning models that seek to enhance the grocery shopping experience.

    From forecasting to selection, Amazon Fresh scientists are working through (often open) research challenges to develop machine learning models that seek to enhance the grocery shopping experience. Learn how Amazon Fresh is leveraging scientific innovation to meet increased consumer demand.

  10. Creating sustainable, data-driven buildings
    Sense, Act, and Scale 2
    The path to improving building energy efficiency can be paved with the framework of sense, act, and scale say Bharathan Balaji and Rob Aldrich

    Bharathan Balaji , an Amazon senior research scientist, and Rob Aldrich, senior sustainability strategist, write about what must happen to meet the United Nations Global Status Report goal of making buildings at least 30% more energy efficient in order to achieve Paris Agreement goals.

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Applied Scientist, Prime Video - Playback Intelligence
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Prime Video is a first-stop entertainment destination offering customers a vast collection of premium programming in one app available across thousands of devices. Prime members can customize their viewing experience and find their favorite movies, series, documentaries, and live sports – including Amazon MGM Studios-produced series and movies; licensed fan favorites; and programming from Prime Video add-on subscriptions such as Apple TV+, Max, Crunchyroll and MGM+. All customers, regardless of whether they have a Prime membership or not, can rent or buy titles via the Prime Video Store, and can enjoy even more content for free with ads. Are you interested in shaping the future of entertainment? Prime Video's technology teams are creating best-in-class digital video experience. As a Prime Video technologist, you’ll have end-to-end ownership of the product, user experience, design, and technology required to deliver state-of-the-art experiences for our customers. You’ll get to work on projects that are fast-paced, challenging, and varied. You’ll also be able to experiment with new possibilities, take risks, and collaborate with remarkable people. We’ll look for you to bring your diverse perspectives, ideas, and skill-sets to make Prime Video even better for our customers. With global opportunities for talented technologists, you can decide where a career Prime Video Tech takes you! As an Applied Scientist in the Prime Video Playback Intelligence Organization, you will have deep subject matter expertise in applied machine learning and data science, with specializations in video streaming optimization, information retrieval, anomaly detection and root-causing systems, large language models and generative AI across various modalities. Key job responsibilities - Work with multiple teams of scientists, engineers, and product managers to translate business and functional requirements into concrete deliverables leading strategic efforts to enhance customer quality of experiences. - Work on problems spaces such as: improving the customer playback quality of experience across Video on Demand, Live Events and Linear Content. - Reduce the time/cost/effort to optimize the customer experience as well as detect, root-cause, and mitigate defects in the customer experience. You’ll seek to understand the depth and nuance of streaming video at scale and identify opportunities to grow our business and improve customer quality of experience via principled ML/AI solutions. - Lead integration of new algorithms and processes into existing modeling stacks, simplify and streamline the existing modeling stacks, and develop testing and evaluation strategies. Ultimately, you'll work backwards from the desired outcomes and lead the way on determining the ideal solution (statistical techniques, traditional ML, GenAI, etc). A day in the life We love solving challenging and hard problems in our quest to innovate on behalf of our customers and provide the best video streaming experience. We push the boundaries to leverage and invent technologies which help create unrivaled experiences for our customers to help us move fast in a growing and changing environment. We use data to guide our decisions, work closely with our engineering and product counterparts, and partner with other Science teams as well as academic institutions to learn and guide in an environment of innovation.
Applied Scientist, Selection Monitoring
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Selection Monitoring team is responsible for making the biggest catalog on the planet even bigger. In order to drive expansion of the Amazon catalog, we develop advanced ML/AI technologies to process billions of products and algorithmically find products not already sold on Amazon. We work with structured, semi-structured and Visually Rich Documents using deep learning, NLP and image processing. The role demands a high-performing and flexible candidate who can take responsibility for success of the system and drive solutions from research, prototype, design, coding and deployment. We are looking for Applied Scientists to tackle challenging problems in the areas of Information Extraction, Efficient crawling at internet scale, developing ML models for website comprehension and agents to take multi-step decisions. You should have depth and breadth of knowledge in text mining, information extraction from Visually Rich Documents, semi structured data (HTML) and advanced machine learning. You should also have programming and design skills to manipulate Semi-Structured and unstructured data and systems that work at internet scale. You will encounter many challenges, including: - Scale (build models to handle billions of pages), - Accuracy (requirements for precision and recall) - Speed (generate predictions for millions of new or changed pages with low latency) - Diversity (models need to work across different languages, market places and data sources) You will help us to - Build a scalable system which can algorithmically extract information from world wide web. - Intelligently cluster web pages, segment and classify regions, extract relevant information and structure the data available on semi-structured web. - Build systems that will use existing Knowledge Base to perform open information extraction at scale from visually rich documents. Key job responsibilities - Use AI, NLP and advances in LLMs/SLMs and agentic systems to create scalable solutions for business problems. - Efficiently Crawl web, Automate extraction of relevant information from large amounts of Visually Rich Documents and optimize key processes. - Design, develop, evaluate and deploy, innovative and highly scalable ML models, esp. leveraging latest advances in RL-based fine tuning methods like DPO, GRPO etc. - Work closely with software engineering teams to drive real-time model implementations. - Establish scalable, efficient, automated processes for large scale model development, model validation and model maintenance. - Lead projects and mentor other scientists, engineers in the use of ML techniques. - Publish innovation in research forums.
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Alexa International Science team is looking for a passionate, talented, and inventive Senior Applied Scientist to help build industry-leading technology with Large Language Models (LLMs) and multimodal systems, requiring strong deep learning and generative models knowledge. At this level, you will drive cross-team scientific strategy, influence partner teams, and deliver solutions that have broad impact across Alexa's international products and services. Key job responsibilities As a Senior Applied Scientist with the Alexa International team, you will work with talented peers to develop novel algorithms and modeling techniques to advance the state of the art with LLMs, particularly delivering industry-leading scientific research and applied AI for multi-lingual applications — a challenging area for the industry globally. Your work will directly impact our global customers in the form of products and services that support Alexa+. You will leverage Amazon's heterogeneous data sources and large-scale computing resources to accelerate advances in text, speech, and vision domains. The ideal candidate possesses a solid understanding of machine learning, speech and/or natural language processing, modern LLM architectures, LLM evaluation & tooling, and a passion for pushing boundaries in this vast and quickly evolving field. They thrive in fast-paced environment, like to tackle complex challenges, excel at swiftly delivering impactful solutions while iterating based on user feedback, and are able to influence and align multiple teams around a shared scientific vision.
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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. Our work leverages large vision language models (VLMs) with reinforcement learning (RL) and world modeling to solve perception, reasoning, and planning to build useful enterprise agents. 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. Key job responsibilities You will contribute directly to AI agent development in an applied research role to improve the multi-model perception and visual-reasoning abilities of our agent. Daily responsibilities including model training, dataset design, and pre- and post-training optimization. You will be hired as a Member of Technical Staff.
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We are looking for detail-oriented, organized, and responsible individuals who are eager to learn how to apply their structural econometrics skillsets to solve real world problems. The intern will work in the area of Amazon Private Brands and develop models to improve our product selection. Our PhD Economist Internship Program offers hands-on experience in applied economics, supported by mentorship, structured feedback, and professional development. Interns work on real business and research problems, building skills that prepare them for full-time economist roles at Amazon and beyond. You will learn how to build data sets and perform applied econometric analysis collaborating with economists, scientists, and product managers. These skills will translate well into writing applied chapters in your dissertation and provide you with work experience that may help you with placement. These are full-time positions at 40 hours per week, with compensation being awarded on an hourly basis. About the team The Amazon Private Brands science advance team applies Machine Learning, Statistics and Econometrics/economics to solve high-impact business problems, develop prototypes for Amazon-scale science solutions, and optimize key business functions of Amazon Private Brands and other Amazon orgs. We are an interdisciplinary team, using science and technology and leveraging the strengths of engineers and scientists to build solutions for some of the toughest business problems at Amazon, covering areas such as pricing, discovery, negotiation, forecasting, supply chain and product selection/development.
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Applied Scientist, Special Projects
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Innovators wanted! Are you an entrepreneur? A builder? A dreamer? This role is part of an Amazon Special Projects team that takes the company’s Think Big leadership principle to the next-level. We focus on creating entirely new products and services with a goal of positively impacting the lives of our customers. No industries or subject areas are out of bounds. If you’re interested in innovating at scale to address big challenges in the world, this is the team for you. Here at Amazon, we embrace our differences. We are committed to furthering our culture of inclusion. We have thirteen employee-led affinity groups, reaching 40,000 employees in over 190 chapters globally. We are constantly learning through programs that are local, regional, and global. Amazon’s culture of inclusion is reinforced within our 16 Leadership Principles, which remind team members to seek diverse perspectives, learn and be curious, and earn trust. Key job responsibilities * Develop, deploy, and operate scalable bioinformatics analysis workflows on AWS * Evaluate and incorporate novel bioinformatic approaches to solve critical business problems * Originate and lead the development of new data collection workflows with cross-functional partners * Partner with laboratory science teams on design and analysis of experiments About the team Our team highly values work-life balance, mentorship and career growth. We believe striking the right balance between your personal and professional life is critical to life-long happiness and fulfillment. We care about your career growth and strive to assign projects and offer training that will challenge you to become your best.
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The AWS Marketplace & Partner Services Science team seeks an Applied Scientist to drive innovation across multiple AI domains, including Context Engineering in Agent-based Systems, Agent Evaluations, and Next-generation Recommendations. This role will be instrumental in revolutionizing how customers discover solutions for cloud migrations and modernization initiatives. The ideal candidate thrives in an environment of practical application and scientific rigor, demonstrating both technical excellence and business acumen. They should be passionate about collaboration and contributing to a culture of continuous learning and innovation. This role directly influences how thousands of AWS customers discover and implement software solutions, making it crucial for AWS Marketplace's growth and customer success. The position offers the opportunity to shape the future of AI-driven customer solution recommendations while working with innovative technologies at AWS scale. Key job responsibilities - Design and optimize context engineering solutions for large language models and agent-based systems - Establish innovative and useful evaluation strategies for measuring agent performance and effectiveness - Collaborate with cross-functional teams, such as Product and Engineering leaders, to translate scientific innovations into customer value - Publishing research or contributing to internal/external publications About the team The AWS Marketplace & Partner Services Science team is at the forefront of developing and deploying AI/ML systems that serve multiple critical stakeholders: - AWS Customers: Through the AWS Marketplace, we support Discovery tools that streamline cloud adoption and innovation. - AWS Partners: Via Partner Central, we offer advanced tools and insights to enhance collaboration and drive mutual growth. - Internal AWS Sellers: We equip our sales force with data-driven recommendations to better serve our customers and partners. Our primary objective is to accelerate cloud migrations and modernizations, fostering innovation for AWS customers while simultaneously supporting the growth and success of our extensive partner network. Why AWS Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. We pioneered cloud computing and never stopped innovating — that’s why customers from the most successful startups to Global 500 companies trust our robust suite of products and services to power their businesses. Inclusive Team Culture Here at AWS, it’s in our nature to learn and be curious. Our employee-led affinity groups foster a culture of inclusion that empower us to be proud of our differences. Ongoing events and learning experiences, including our Conversations on Race and Ethnicity (CORE) and AmazeCon conferences, inspire us to never stop embracing our uniqueness. Work/Life Balance We value work-life harmony. Achieving success at work should never come at the expense of sacrifices at home, which is why we strive for flexibility as part of our working culture. When we feel supported in the workplace and at home, there’s nothing we can’t achieve in the cloud. Mentorship and Career Growth We’re continuously raising our performance bar as we strive to become Earth’s Best Employer. That’s why you’ll find endless knowledge-sharing, mentorship and other career-advancing resources here to help you develop into a better-rounded professional. Diverse Experiences Amazon values diverse experiences. Even if you do not meet all of the preferred qualifications and skills listed in the job description, we encourage candidates to apply. If your career is just starting, hasn’t followed a traditional path, or includes alternative experiences, don’t let it stop you from applying.
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