Internship Openings

The Computational Sensing Team at MERL is seeking an intern to work on estimation algorithms for single-photon lidar. The ideal candidate would be a PhD student with a strong background in statistical modeling, estimation theory, computational imaging, and/or inverse problems. The intern will collaborate with MERL researchers to design new lidar reconstruction algorithms, conduct simulations, and prepare results for publication. A detailed knowledge of single-photon detection, lidar, and Poisson processes is preferred. Hands-on optics experience may be beneficial but is not required. Strong programming skills in Python or MATLAB are essential. The duration is anticipated to be 3 months with a flexible start date.

The pay range for this internship position will be 6-8K per month.

MERL is seeking a motivated intern to assist in developing hardware and algorithms for multimodal imaging applications. The project involves integration of radar, camera, and depth sensors in a variety of sensing scenarios. The ideal candidate should have experience with FMCW radar and/or depth sensing, and be fluent in Python and scripting methods. Familiarity with optical tracking of humans and experience with hardware prototyping is desired. Good knowledge of computational imaging and/or radar imaging methods is a plus.

Required Specific Experience

• Experience with Python and Python Deep Learning Frameworks.
• Experience with FMCW radar and/or Depth Sensors.

The pay range for this internship position will be 6-8K per month.

The Computation Sensing team at MERL is seeking a highly motivated intern to conduct fundamental research on sensor reasoning models—algorithms that can understand, explain, and act on multi-sensor data (e.g., RF, infrared, LiDAR, event camera) through text-, visual-, and multimodal reasoning. Ideal candidates will be comfortable bridging modern perception (detection/segmentation/tracking) with higher-level reasoning capabilities. Experience with text, visual, and multimodal reasoning is highly preferred. The intern will work closely with MERL researchers to develop novel algorithms, design experiments using MERL’s in-house testbeds, and prepare results for patents and publication. The internship is expected to last 3 months, with a flexible start date from October 2025 onward.

Required Specific Experience

• Reasoning with sensor data: Demonstrated work in text-, visual-, and multimodal reasoning (e.g., VQA over sensor streams, temporal/spatio-temporal reasoning, chain-of-thought, instruction following).
• LLMs & VLMs for sensor perception: Experience aligning or conditioning LLMs/VLMs on sensor outputs (e.g., point clouds, radar heatmaps, BEV features).
• Perception foundations: Solid understanding of state-of-the-art transformer-based (e.g., DETR) and diffusion-based (e.g., DiffusionDet) frameworks
• Datasets & evaluation: Hands-on experience with open large-scale multi-sensor datasets (e.g., nuScenes, Waymo Open Dataset, Argoverse) and open radar datasets (e.g., MMVR, HIBER, RT-Pose, K-Radar). Ability to design reasoning-centric benchmarks (e.g., QA over multi-sensor inputs, temporal prediction).
• Proficiency in Python and deep learning frameworks (PyTorch/JAX), plus experience with GPU cluster job scheduling and scalable data pipelines.
• Proven publication record in top-tier venues such as CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML (or equivalent).
• Knowledge of sensor (RF, infrared, LiDAR, event camera) fundamentals; for radar, familiarity with FMCW, MIMO, Doppler signatures, radar point clouds/heatmaps, and raw ADC waveforms.
• Familiarity with MERL’s recent radar perception research, e.g., TempoRadar, SIRA, MMVR, RETR.

The pay range for this internship position will be6-8K per month.

The Computational Sensing Team at MERL is seeking an intern to work with MERL researchers on algorithms based on interacting particle systems for solving inverse problems. The focus of the project is particle-efficiency and applicability to non-log-concave posterior distributions (which may result from nonlinear forward operators). The project includes algorithm design, (finite-particle) convergence analysis, and/or empirical evaluation for challenging inverse problems such as full waveform inversion. The ideal candidate would be a PhD student with a solid background in applied probability or Bayesian sampling. Programming skills in Python or MATLAB are required. The duration is anticipated to be at least 3 months with a flexible start date.

The pay range for this internship position will be 6-8K per month.

The Computational Sensing team at MERL is seeking a highly motivated PhD student for an internship focused on uncertainty quantification (UQ) in computational modeling of physical systems. The goal of this project is to advance the methodology and practice of UQ, with a focus on generative models, reduced-order stochastic models, and optimal sensor placement for Bayesian inverse problems. The research will draw upon foundational ideas and techniques in applied mathematics and statistics for applications in wave propagation, fluid dynamics, and more generally high-dimensional systems. The ideal candidate will be a PhD student in engineering, applied mathematics, computer science, or related fields with a solid background and publication record in any of the following areas: generative models, stochastic modeling, dimensionality reduction, Bayesian inference, optimal experimental design, and tensor methods. Programming skills in Python or MATLAB are required. Publication of the results obtained during the internship is expected. The duration is anticipated to be at least 3 months with a flexible start date.

The pay range for this internship position will be $6-8K per month.

The Computational Sensing team at MERL is seeking a highly motivated intern to conduct fundamental research in radar-based perception (detection, tracking, pose/shape, segmentation) and generation (e.g., waveform/signal synthesis, differentiable radar simulators, dynamic scene generation). Previous hands-on experience with open indoor and outdoor radar datasets is a plus. Familiarity with basic radar concepts and MERL's recent work in radar perception is an asset. The intern will work closely with MERL researchers to develop novel algorithms, design experiments with MERL in-house testbed, and prepare results for patents and publication. The internship is expected to last 3 months.

Required Specific Experience

• Solid understanding of state-of-the-art perception and generation frameworks including transformer-based (e.g., DETR), diffusion-based (e.g., DiffusionDet), and hybrid neural-physics pipelines.
• Hands-on experience with open large-scale radar datasets such as MMVR, HIBER, RT-Pose, HuPR.
• Proficiency in Python and experience with job scheduling on GPU clusters using tools like Slurm.
• Proven publication records in top-tier venues such as CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, NeurIPS.
• Knowledge of basic radar concepts such as FMCW, MIMO, (micro-) Doppler signature, radar point clouds, heatmaps, and raw ADC waveforms.
• Familiarity with MERL's recent radar perception research such as TempoRadar, SIRA, MMVR, RETR, and RAPTR.

The pay range for this internship position will be 6-8K per month.

MERL is seeking a motivated intern to support a research project focused on detecting and estimating properties of radiation sources (e.g., gamma, beta, alpha). The Computational Sensing team is developing new estimation and inference methods to analyze sensor data from radiation detection systems. To enable this, we require realistic physics-based simulations of particle transport and sensor interactions. The primary goal of this internship is to develop and validate high-fidelity radiation simulations using the Geant4 toolkit, providing data and visualization tools that will accelerate our algorithm development and testing. The ideal candidate would be a PhD student with experience in detector modeling and a familiarity with data analysis tools such as NumPy or ROOT. An understanding of inverse problems or estimation techniques may be beneficial but is not required. The duration is anticipated to be 3 - 6 months with a flexible start date.

Required Specific Experience

• Strong background in nuclear physics, radiation detection, or high-energy physics.
• Demonstrated expertise with Geant4 (geometry setup, physics lists, scoring, visualization).

The pay range for this internship position will be 6-8K per month.

The Computational Sensing team at MERL is seeking motivated and qualified individuals to develop algorithms that can perform background oriented schlieren (BOS) tomography. The project goal is to utilize both analytical and learning-based architectures to enable the reconstruction of 3D air flows in an indoor setting from BOS measurements coupled with physics informed machine learning. Ideal candidates should be Ph.D. students and have solid background and publication record in any of the following, or related areas: imaging inverse problems, large-scale optimization, differentiable scene rendering, learning-based modeling for imaging, and physics informed neural networks. Preferred skills include experience with schlieren tomography, inverse rendering, neural scene representation, computational imaging hardware, and computationally efficient optimization of PINNs. Publication of the results produced during our internships is expected. The duration of the internships is anticipated to be 3-6 months. Start date is flexible.

Required Specific Experience

• Experience with differentiable/physics-based rendering.

The pay range for this internship position will be 6-8K per month.

The Computational Sensing team at MERL is seeking a highly motivated Ph.D. student for a research internship in machine learning for fluid dynamics, focusing on surrogate modeling of free-surface flows in engineered geometries. The goal of this project is to develop geometry-aware and physics-informed surrogate models for complex flow systems, combining high-fidelity simulations with modern neural architectures. The ideal candidate will be a Ph.D. student in engineering, applied mathematics, computer science, or related fields with a solid background and publication record in any of the following areas: operator learning, graph neural networks and geometric learning, particle-based methods, or differentiable simulation frameworks. Programming skills in Python and experience with deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, or JAX are required. Publication of the results obtained during the internship is expected. The duration is anticipated to be at least 3 months with a flexible start date.

The pay range for this internship position will be $6-8K per month.

The Computational Sensing team at MERL is seeking a highly motivated intern to conduct fundamental research on multi-modal sensing and understanding —algorithms that can understand, explain, and act on multi-sensor data (e.g., RF, infrared, LiDAR, event camera). Ideal candidates will be comfortable bridging state-of-the-art perception (detection/segmentation/tracking) with higher-level semantic understanding and reasoning capabilities. Experience with text, visual, and multimodal reasoning is a plus. The intern will work closely with MERL researchers to develop novel algorithms, design experiments using MERL’s in-house testbeds, and prepare results for patents and publication. The internship is expected to last 3 months, with a flexible start date.

Required Specific Experience

• Expertise in physical sensing across RF (radar, UWB, Wi-Fi), infrared, LiDAR, and event-camera modalities. Experienced with radar systems and concepts including FMCW and MIMO configurations, Doppler signature interpretation, radar point cloud and heatmap representations, and raw ADC waveforms;
• Solid understanding of state-of-the-art transformer-based (e.g., DETR) and diffusion-based (e.g., DiffusionDet) frameworks;
• Demonstrated work in text-, visual-, and multimodal semantic understanding and reasoning.
• Hands-on experience with open large-scale multi-sensor datasets (e.g., nuScenes, Waymo Open Dataset, Argoverse) and open radar datasets (e.g., MMVR, HIBER, RT-Pose, K-Radar).
• Proficiency in Python and deep learning frameworks (PyTorch/JAX), plus experience with GPU cluster job scheduling and scalable data pipelines.
• Proven publication record in top-tier venues such as CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML (or equivalent).

The pay range for this internship position will be 6-8K per month.