Research Scientist - College of Engineering - Mechanical Engineering

Carnegie Mellon University•Pittsburgh, PA

About The Position

Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Mechanical Engineering is seeking a Research Scientist to lead the Safe AI Lab’s research program on scenario generation, simulation, and digital twins for embodied AI. The role involves building digital twins of industrial work cells and assembly processes, generating safety-critical and long-tail scenarios from incident data, standards, and procedural variation, and evaluating robot policies in physics simulators to produce quantitative safety evidence and validate sim-to-real transfer. The Research Scientist will propose and lead independent research goals within the scope of the lab’s projects, coordinate and direct student researchers, co-write research papers and related materials, and present findings at national and international conferences. The position is based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and is listed as full-time staff on a fixed-term appointment.

Requirements

5–8 years of experience.
A successful background check.
A combination of education and relevant experience demonstrating comparable knowledge may be considered.

Nice To Haves

Master’s degree preferred.
Experience with robot simulation (Isaac Sim, MuJoCo, or game engines), 3D scene and digital-twin construction, machine learning systems, and research project leadership is strongly preferred.

Responsibilities

Build digital twins of industrial work cells and automated assembly processes using CAD, point clouds, and video.
Maintain simulation-ready asset and layout libraries with controlled variation.
Develop scenario-generation pipelines that turn incident reports, safety standards, and recorded human motion into simulation scenarios, including procedurally generated long-tail and safety-critical cases.
Run simulation-based evaluations of classical, reinforcement-learning, and VLA/VLM robot policies.
Define safety metrics, including separation distance, contact speed and force, and near-misses; use importance sampling to find rare failures; and validate sim-to-real transfer on lab robot platforms.
Propose and lead independent research goals within the scope of the lab’s projects.
Coordinate and direct student researchers.
Co-write papers, documentation, and progress reports.
Present at national and international conferences.
Perform other duties as assigned.