Assistant Physicist

Argonne National Laboratory•Lemont, IL

3d•$94,486 - $147,399•Onsite

About The Position

The X-ray Imaging Group at the Advanced Photon Source (APS) operates full-field x-ray imaging beamlines and conducts collaborative research across various scientific disciplines. With the APS Upgrade, there's a significant increase in data rates and experimental complexity, driving investment in AI/ML-driven software, automation, and autonomous experimentation. This includes a planned fully autonomous, AI-driven tomography beamline. The role involves leading the design and deployment of AI-powered software to support user operations, automate data acquisition and analysis, and enable closed-loop, autonomous experiments. This work is done in coordination with the APS Computational Science and AI group and other APS AI efforts. The appointee will benefit from access to world-leading experimental and computational resources at Argonne, including the upgraded APS and the Aurora supercomputer.

Requirements

Ph.D. in computer science, electrical engineering, computational physics, computational materials science, applied mathematics, or a closely related field.
Demonstrated expertise in AI/ML applied to imaging or scientific data, including hands-on experience developing and deploying deep-learning models (e.g., CNNs, vision transformers, diffusion models, or related architectures).
Strong scientific software development skills in Python and modern deep-learning frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow), including experience with distributed training on high-performance computing resources.
Experience with high-performance computing (HPC) and/or cloud environments.
Experience with version control (e.g., Git) and collaborative software development practices.
Experience working with experimental imaging data, ideally at a synchrotron, electron microscopy, medical imaging, or comparable facility.
Ability to work effectively both independently and in a collaborative, team-based research environment.
Ability to model Argonne's core values of impact, safety, respect, integrity, and teamwork.
Interpersonal skills, oral and written communication skills, and ability to interact with people at all levels both within and outside the laboratory.

Nice To Haves

Experience developing AI/ML methods specifically for x-ray imaging, tomography, or high-speed imaging applications.
Experience designing or contributing to automated, remote, or closed-loop ("self-driving") experimental workflows, including real-time data reduction, on-the-fly reconstruction, and AI-based experimental steering.
Experience collaborating with facility-level computing, data, or AI groups to deploy software into production scientific environments.
Experience handling high-rate, large-volume imaging datasets and developing high-throughput reconstruction or analysis pipelines.
Experience contributing to open-source scientific software projects.
Familiarity with metadata standards, data management, and curation practices that support reproducible science and ML training datasets.
Familiarity with beamline data acquisition systems, detectors, or controls software, sufficient to integrate AI tools into operational workflows.

Responsibilities

Design, develop, and deploy AI/ML tools for x-ray imaging operations including reconstruction, super-resolution, spatiotemporal fusion, denoising, segmentation, and feature extraction — and integrate them into the beamline software stack.
Build closed-loop experimental workflows in which AI agents use streaming data and real-time reconstruction and analysis to steer measurement decisions, and contribute to the development of a fully autonomous, AI-driven tomography beamline as a flagship project for the group.
Collaborate with the APS Computation and AI (CAI) group and engage with other APS AI efforts and activities to align Imaging Group tools with facility-wide AI/ML infrastructure, data services, and computing resources, and to contribute to shared frameworks for autonomous experimentation.
Develop automated pipelines for acquisition, quality control, and downstream analysis that translate beamline-scientist expertise and currently manual operational steps into robust, reusable software.
Build and maintain pipelines for robust metadata capture and the systematic generation of curated, standardized datasets to support continual AI/ML model training and validation.
Provide on-site support for user operations and data collection across the X-ray Imaging Group beamlines, working directly with beamline staff and users during experiments.
Contribute to the longer-term extension of AI-enabled automation and autonomy across Imaging Group modalities, including micro- and nano-tomography and high-speed imaging.
Prepare experiments and instruments for remote and AI-driven operation.
Present research results through publications, conferences, and scientific meetings.
May be required to perform other duties as assigned.