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Foundation Model Development call for proposals — Winter 2024

Advancing the frontiers of foundation model development.

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About this CFP

AWS offers a broad and deep set of services for organizations to create meaningful machine learning solutions faster. Our mission is to share our learnings and ML capabilities as fully managed services, and put them into the hands of every scientist and developer.

AWS is soliciting funding proposals related to foundation model (FM) development, including enhancements for dialogue, factual questioning and answering, text generation, document summarization, image generation, and more. Proposals should be expanding the state of the art in terms of training methods, with a focus on one of the following areas: 1) to reduce incorrect or nonsensical answers, 2) to reduce the sensitivity to tweaks to the input prompt, 3) ask clarifying questions when facing ambiguous questions, 4) develop efficiency enhancements across the training and hosting FM lifecycle.

We are inviting work that both critiques and enhances the state-of-the-art in FM, including but not limited to the following topics:

  • Reinforcement learning with human feedback
  • Scaling laws and their inverse, including for model fine-tuning
  • Novel datasets and training methods
  • Distillation with enhanced reasoning
  • Foundation models in novel modalities and domains, such as biology, manufacturing, fashion, etc.
  • Bias detection and mitigation throughout the foundation model lifecycle

AWS aims to advance foundation model development by funding the creation of open-source artifacts, datasets and code that benefit the research community at large, or impactful research that uses machine learning tools. AWS will provide credits for use on EC2 instances powered by AWS Trainium chips to help researchers develop and test solutions at scale. In addition to AWS Trainium, proposed research can be conducted using AWS AI Services, AWS ML Services (Amazon SageMaker, Amazon SageMaker Ground Truth, Amazon SageMaker Neo, and Amazon Augmented AI), and Amazon Bedrock.

Timeline

  • Submission period: January 17 - March 6, 2024 (11:59PM Pacific Time)
  • Decision letters will be sent out in October 2024

Award details

Selected Principal Investigators (PIs) may receive the following:

  • $250,000 in AWS Promotional Credits, which can be used on generally available EC2 instances that are powered by AWS Trainium chips
  • AWS Trainium training resources, including AWS tutorials and hands-on sessions with Amazon scientists and engineers

Awards are structured as one-year unrestricted gifts. The budget should include a list of expected costs specified in USD, and should not include administrative overhead costs.

Your receipt and use of AWS Promotional Credits is governed by the AWS Promotional Credit Terms and Conditions, which may be updated by AWS from time to time.

Eligibility requirements

Please refer to the ARA Program rules on the Rules and Eligibility page.

Proposal requirements

PIs are encouraged to exemplify how their proposed techniques or research studies expand the body of knowledge on pretraining and evaluation methods. PIs should either include plans for open source contributions or state that they do not plan to make any open source contributions (data or code) under the proposed effort. Proposals for this CFP should be prepared according to the proposal template and are encouraged to be a maximum of 5 pages, not including Appendices.

Selection criteria

Funding decisions are based on the creativity and quality of the scientific content, and potential impact to the research community and society at large. AWS may solicit feedback on proposal title and abstracts from select AWS customers, but final award decisions will be made solely by AWS. Proposals will be evaluated based on their express interest in open-sourcing their model artifacts, datasets, and development frameworks. Although usage of Trainium is not a requirement, proposals will be evaluated on their intention to use and explore novel hardware for AI/ML, such as Trainium.

Expectations from recipients

To the extent deemed reasonable, Award recipients should acknowledge the support from ARA. Award recipients will inform ARA of publications, presentations, code and data releases, blogs/social media posts, and other speaking engagements referencing the results of the supported research or the Award. Award recipients are expected to engage with AWS throughout the duration of their award year including, but not limited to, providing reports on the status of their research or updates and feedback to ARA via surveys. Award recipients will have the opportunity to work with ARA on an informational statement about the awarded project that may be used to generate visibility for their institutions and ARA.

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Sr Data Scientist, Amazon Publisher Services
US, NY, New York
External job description Job summary Amazon Publisher Services (APS) helps digital publishers around the world build and grow thriving businesses. We provide services and advanced technologies to web, mobile app and advanced TV publishers of all sizes, including many of comScore’s global top 100, to help them monetize their content with demand from multiple programmatic buyers. Our server-side header bidding solutions are fast and reliable across devices, handling billions of queries per day, delivering ads in milliseconds. The result is more profitable advertising for publishers and more relevant ads for customers. As a Data Scientist on this team, you will: • Solve real-world problems by getting and analyzing large amounts of data, diving deep to identify business insights and opportunities, design simulations and experiments, developing statistical and ML models by tailoring to business needs, and collaborating with Scientists, Engineers, BIE's, and Product Managers. • Write code (Python, R, Scala, etc.) to analyze data and build statistical models to solve specific business problems. • Apply statistical and machine learning knowledge to specific business problems and data. • Build decision-making models and propose solution for the business problem you define. • Retrieve, synthesize, and present critical data in a format that is immediately useful to answering specific questions or improving system performance. • Analyze historical data to identify trends and support optimal decision making. • Formalize assumptions about how our systems are expected to work, create statistical definition of the outlier, and develop methods to systematically identify outliers. Work out why such examples are outliers and define if any actions needed. • Given anecdotes about anomalies or generate automatic scripts to define anomalies, deep dive to explain why they happen, and identify fixes. • Conduct written and verbal presentations to share insights to audiences of varying levels of technical sophistication. Why you will love this opportunity: Amazon is investing heavily in building a world-class advertising business. This team defines and delivers a collection of advertising products that drive discovery and sales. Our solutions generate billions in revenue and drive long-term growth for Amazon’s Retail and Marketplace businesses. We deliver billions of ad impressions, millions of clicks daily, and break fresh ground to create world-class products. We are a highly motivated, collaborative, and fun-loving team with an entrepreneurial spirit - with a broad mandate to experiment and innovate. Impact and Career Growth: You will invent new experiences and influence customer-facing shopping experiences to help suppliers grow their retail business and the auction dynamics that leverage native advertising; this is your opportunity to work within the fastest-growing businesses across all of Amazon! Define a long-term science vision for our advertising business, driven from our customers' needs, translating that direction into specific plans for research and applied scientists, as well as engineering and product teams. This role combines science leadership, organizational ability, technical strength, product focus, and business understanding. About the team The Marketplace Services team within Amazon Publisher Services organization primarily focuses on improving monetization for our STV, Web, Mobile and Audio publisher customers. We directly work with 60+ 3p buyers to enable optimal connectivity for publishers to improve their yield. We also own products such as Connections Marketplace (CxM) and Signal IQ that help publishers connect to myriad of 3p and 1p ad tech vendors to boost their bid request quality, while measuring the value of each signal on their bid stream through rigorous A/B testing. Internal job description The candidate would work with Product, Engineering, BIEs and Scientist across Supply and Demand organization to help make APS the best performing supply path for Amazon ads advertiser customers. They would spearhead efforts to conduct experiments alongside demand and measurement teams to identify optimal perfomance path for advertisers while improving APS Share of Wallet. About the team The Marketplace Services team within Amazon Publisher Services organization primarily focuses on improving monetization for our STV, Web, Mobile and Audio publisher customers. We directly work with 60+ 3p buyers to enable optimal connectivity for publishers to improve their yield. We also own products such as Connections Marketplace (CxM) and Signal IQ that help publishers connect to myriad of 3p and 1p ad tech vendors to boost their bid request quality, while measuring the value of each signal on their bid stream through rigorous A/B testing.
Applied Scientist, Stores Economics & Science (SEAS)
US, WA, Seattle
Stores Economics and Science (SEAS) is an interdisciplinary science and engineering team in Amazon's Stores organization with a peak-jumping mission: we apply expertise in science and engineering to move from local to global optima in methods, models, and software. We pursue this mission by leveraging frontier science; collaborating with partner teams; and learning from the tools, experience, and perspective of others. We scale by solving problems, first in the small to prove concepts, and then in the large by building scalable solutions. We also help other teams within Amazon scale by hiring and developing the best and embedding them in other business units. In 2026, we are focused on economics and science in areas related to (1) lowering cost-to-serve, (2) optimizing selection, and (3) emerging machine learning. We also have some ongoing and highly-leveraged collaborations that help partner teams inside Amazon short-circuit months of R&D or otherwise look around corners. We are looking for an Applied Scientist to build and deliver state-of-the-art science and engineering solutions to improve our Stores business. In this role, you will work in a team of scientists and engineers with backgrounds in machine learning, NLP, IR, statistics, and economics to identify bottlenecks in our business, conceive new ideas to overcome those challenges, and deploy scientific solutions in partnership with product teams. Your responsibilities include developing and maintaining the scientific models, benchmarks, and services. Graduate education or hands-on experience in machine learning, optimization, causal inference, Bayesian statistics, deep learning, or other quantitative scientific fields is a big plus. To be successful in this role, you should be a quick learner and comfortable with a high degree of ambiguity. Key job responsibilities The successful candidate will lead large-scale science initiatives from research to production and translate complex business problems into mathematical frameworks. They will design and implement large-scale algorithms for complex supply chain and marketplace problems, and design incentive-compatible mechanisms for marketplace challenges. The ideal candidate will have a strong publication record in top-tier conferences/journals (INFORMS, EC, WINE, ICML, NeurIPS, etc.) and experience coordinating cross-functional projects. Hands-on experience building science solutions to mechanism design problems (e.g., optimal auction design, welfare maximization under constraints, incentive compatible coordination), with expertise in statistical learning and algorithm development. Leadership responsibilities include influencing technical strategy and roadmaps for complex initiatives, influencing senior stakeholders and shaping technical direction, and fostering team growth.
Applied Scientist, Amazon Customer Service
US, WA, Seattle
The Data Intelligence team is a new function within Amazon Customer Service. We own the end-to-end process of defining, building, implementing, and monitoring a comprehensive data strategy. We also develop and apply Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), Machine Learning (ML), Ontology, and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to enhance customer service associate and customer experiences. As an Applied Scientist, you'll own the definition and implementation of customer-focused, AI-driven innovation in Amazon Customer Service globally, leveraging GenAI, ML, and/or NLP to transform complex business requirements and customer needs into innovative technology solutions. Your expertise will be key in shaping data-driven strategies and addressing complex data challenges. With your expertise in AI, text analysis, embeddings, language modeling, and generation, you'll design and develop scalable AI-powered technology solutions, prioritize initiatives, drive data-driven insights, and deliver business impact. This position will advance applied science best practices, leverage data and AI to drive customer experience improvements, and set new global standards for customer experience. This role requires you to work with a cross-functional team, including scientists, engineers, and product managers, to develop scalable and maintainable AI solutions for both structured and unstructured data. The ideal candidate has strong technical skills in AI techniques (e.g., automated reasoning, reasoning, planning, knowledge representation), excellent written documentation skills, and experience with big data technologies. Success in this role requires combining deep business knowledge with hands-on technical skills to solve customer problems and address complex technical challenges. Key job responsibilities - Develop innovative solutions to complex problems (e.g., Automated Reasoning for Trusted AI-Enabled Customer Service). - Apply technical expertise to implement novel algorithms and modeling solutions, in collaboration with other scientists and engineers. - Analyze data and define metrics to identify actionable insights and measure improvements in customer experience. - Communicate results and insights to both technical and non-technical audiences through written reports, presentations, and internal/external publications. - Collaborate with product management and engineering teams to integrate and optimize models in production systems. A day in the life A typical day as an Applied Scientist in the Data Intelligence team involves combining business expertise with hands-on problem-solving in ML and AI. The role encompasses tackling complex data initiatives, ensuring alignment with customer needs and business objectives, and translating business requirements into practical AI-driven solutions. Working collaboratively with cross-functional teams, this position involves designing and enhancing AI models, focusing on efficiency, precision, and scalability. Daily activities include ensuring data quality, monitoring model performance, and generating actionable insights from vast amounts of information. Each day presents opportunities to resolve complex technical challenges, advance important AI projects, and conceive innovative ways to leverage data in transforming the customer experience. About the team The Data Intelligence team is a new function within Amazon Customer Service. We develop and apply Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), Machine Learning (ML), Ontology, and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to enhance customer service associate and customer experiences.
Senior Structural Design Analysis Engineer, Structural Design Integrity
US, CA, Sunnyvale
Amazon Lab126 is an inventive research and development company that designs and engineers high-profile consumer electronics. Lab126 began in 2004 as a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc., originally creating the best-selling Kindle family of products. Since then, we have produced industry leading devices like Fire tablets, Fire TV and Amazon Echo. The Role: As a Senior Design Analysis Engineer, you will be responsible for bringing new product designs through to manufacturing. Structural engineering contributes unique, in-depth technical knowledge to solve complex engineering problems in concert with multi-disciplinary teams including Industrial Design, Hardware Engineering, and Operations. You will work closely with multi-disciplinary groups including Product Design, Industrial Design, Hardware Engineering, and Operations, to drive key aspects of engineering of consumer electronics products. In this role, you will: · Perform analysis and testing of complex electronic assemblies using advanced simulation and experimentation tools and techniques · Develop, analyze and test thermal, acoustic and structural solutions; from concept design, feature development, product architecture, through system validation · Support creative developments through application of analysis and testing of complex electronic assemblies using advanced simulation and experimentation tools and techniques · Use simulation tools like Abaqus for analysis and design of products · Validate design modifications using simulation and actual prototypes · Use of programming languages like Python and Matlab for analytical/statistical analyses and automation · Establish noise thresholds for usability and compliance requirements · Determine and validate structural performance under use and test conditions · Have strong knowledge of various materials such as heat spreaders solutions to resolve thermal issues, damping materials for noise and vibration suppression · Use various data acquisition systems with thermocouples, accelerometers, strain gauges and IR cameras · Collaborate as part of the device team to iterate and optimize design parameters of enclosures and structural parts to establish and deliver project performance objectives · Design and execute tests using statistical tools to validate analytical models, identify risks and assess design margins · Create and present analytical and experimental results · Develop and apply design guidelines based on project results
Applied Scientist II, Sponsored Products
US, NY, New York
The Sponsored Products and Brands team at Amazon Ads is re-imagining the advertising landscape through cutting-edge generative AI technologies, revolutionizing how millions of customers discover products and engage with brands across Amazon.com and beyond. We are at the forefront of re-inventing advertising experiences, bridging human creativity with artificial intelligence to transform every aspect of the advertising lifecycle from ad creation and optimization to performance analysis and customer insights. We are a passionate group of innovators dedicated to developing responsible and intelligent AI technologies that balance the needs of advertisers, enhance the shopping experience, and strengthen the marketplace. If you're energized by solving complex challenges and pushing the boundaries of what's possible with AI, join us in shaping the future of advertising. Key job responsibilities Participate in the Science hiring process as well as mentor other scientists - improving their skills, their knowledge of your solutions, and their ability to get things done. Identify and devise new video related solutions following a customer-obsessed scientific approach to address customer or business problems when the problem is ill-defined, needs to be framed, and new methodologies or paradigms need to be invented at the product level. Articulate potential scientific challenges of ongoing or future customers’ needs or business problems, and present interventions to address them. Independently assess alternative video related technologies, driving evaluation and adoption of those that fit best A day in the life As an Applied Scientist on the Sponsored Brands Video team, you will work with a team of talented and experienced engineers, scientists, and designers to help bring new products to market and ensure that our customers are delighted by what we create. The Sponsored Brands Video team is responsible for the design, development, and implementation of Sponsored Brands Video experiences worldwide. About the team The Sponsored Brands Video team within Sponsored Products and Brands creates relevant and engaging video experiences, connecting advertisers and shoppers. We are on a mission to make Amazon the best in class destination for shoppers to discover, engage and build affinity with brands, making shopping delightful, & personal.
Applied Scientist, Fauna
US, NY, New York
We are seeking an Applied Scientist to lead the development of evaluation frameworks and data collection protocols for robotic capabilities. In this role, you will focus on designing how we measure, stress-test, and improve robot behavior across a wide range of real-world tasks. Your work will play a critical role in shaping how policies are validated and how high-quality datasets are generated to accelerate system performance. You will operate at the intersection of robotics, machine learning, and human-in-the-loop systems, building the infrastructure and methodologies that connect teleoperation, evaluation, and learning. This includes developing evaluation policies, defining task structures, and contributing to operator-facing interfaces that enable scalable and reliable data collection. The ideal candidate is highly experimental, systems-oriented, and comfortable working across software, robotics, and data pipelines, with a strong focus on turning ambiguous capability goals into measurable and actionable evaluation systems. Key job responsibilities - Design and implement evaluation frameworks to measure robot capabilities across structured tasks, edge cases, and real-world scenarios - Develop task definitions, success criteria, and benchmarking methodologies that enable consistent and reproducible evaluation of policies - Create and refine data collection protocols that generate high-quality, task-relevant datasets aligned with model development needs - Build and iterate on teleoperation workflows and operator interfaces to support efficient, reliable, and scalable data collection - Analyze evaluation results and collected data to identify performance gaps, failure modes, and opportunities for targeted data collection - Collaborate with engineering teams to integrate evaluation tooling, logging systems, and data pipelines into the broader robotics stack - Stay current with advances in robotics, evaluation methodologies, and human-in-the-loop learning to continuously improve internal approaches - Lead technical projects from conception through production deployment - Mentor junior scientists and engineers
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