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 position develops digital twins of industrial work cells and assembly processes, generates safety-critical and long-tail scenarios using incident data, standards, and procedural variation, and evaluates robot policies in physics simulators to produce quantitative safety evidence and support sim-to-real validation. The Research Scientist proposes and leads independent research goals within the scope of the lab’s projects, coordinates student researchers, and contributes to publications and presentations. The role requires effective interaction with varied internal and external partners, along with integrity, flexibility, collaboration, cultural sensitivity, excellence, and a commitment to the university’s mission. Other duties may be assigned.

Requirements

5–8 years of experience.
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 from 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 procedural generation of long-tail and safety-critical cases.
Evaluate classical, reinforcement-learning, and VLA/VLM robot policies in simulation; define safety metrics such as 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 lab projects.
Coordinate and direct student researchers.
Co-write papers, documentation, and progress reports.
Present at national and international conferences.
Perform other duties as assigned.