Data Science/Cognitive Science/Computer Science Graduate Research Assistant - Spring 2027 - SEAL

Overview

The Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) is the nonprofit, applied research division of the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). Founded in 1934 as the Engineering Experiment Station, GTRI has grown to more than 2,900 employees, supporting eight laboratories in over 20 locations around the country and performing more than $940 million of problem-solving research annually for government and industry. GTRI's renowned researchers combine science, engineering, economics, policy, and technical expertise to solve complex problems for the U.S. federal government, state, and industry.

About the Role

This GTRI Graduate Research Assistant (GRA) position offers you extensive opportunities to participate in diverse scientific and technological endeavors, use state-of-the-art equipment and rapidly improve your technical and leadership skills. This position is for one semester (Spring 2027) of a quarter-time (25%) graduate assistantship.

Georgia Tech Research Institute's Sensors and Electromagnetic Applications Laboratory (SEAL) seeks a GRA to join our Command, Control, and Communications (C3D) team for Fall 2025 and Spring 2026. Students will assist Research Scientists in various Cognitive Science and Computer/Data Science related research tasks. Students should be interested in learning about C3 operations, design and development of human-centered artificial intelligence, cognitive modeling, and simulation. Students should also be capable of helping to conduct research under the direction of Research Scientists, participating in computational analysis using standard analysis packages such as R, SPSS, or others used in scientific research, and competently reporting the results of such analysis according to professional publication standards. Computing student applicants should have software engineering and AI/ML experience, ideally with past work/project experiences developing in Python. Psychology/Social Science applicants should have research experience such as guided literature reviews, research proposals, research design, data collection, data analysis and visualization, and research reporting.

Job Duties

Due to the nature of the work at GTRI, job duties will depend upon contract and sponsor needs. Students could participate in the following projects/tasks:

• Perform exploratory research (or human subjects research if applicable) to address sponsor interests
• Conduct and report on computational science/data analysis
• Coordinate with other research scientists/engineers to develop software for research testbed and experimental gaming platforms
• Contribute to technical reports and presentations

Required Minimum Qualifications

• Graduate Research Assistant pursuing a Master's degree or PhD at Georgia Tech in Computer Science, Cybersecurity, Human Computer Interaction, Psychology, Public Policy, or International Affairs
• Must be enrolled full-time (12+ credit hours)
• Must have a 3.0 or higher cumulative GPA
• Commit to 13-20 hours of work per week
• Ability to apply foundational cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and/or cognitive psychology principles and concepts to applied and exploratory research in artificial intelligence and human machine teaming
• Experience in contributing to academic research, ability to complete CITI training (as applicable) upon onboarding
• Experience with common programming languages or data analysis software packages for computational data science (e.g., R, SPSS, SAS, Java, Python, C++)
• Good academic writing and verbal communication skills
• Familiarity with office applications including Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint

Preferred Qualifications

• Ability to clearly communicate technical ideas
• Ability to quickly learn new software applications and tools
• Ability to explore and quickly learn computational analysis and/or qualitative analysis approaches
• Experience with common programming languages for software development to support the construction of basic AI/ML applications (e.g., Java, Python)
• Experience with machine learning frameworks such as PyTorch/Tensorflow
• Knowledgeable about or able to quickly learn video gaming concepts and environments
• Ability to learn human systems engineering/human-centered design approaches with mentor guidance

Hours per Week

13–20 hours per week

U.S. Citizenship Requirements

Due to our research contracts with the US federal government, candidates for this position are required to be US Citizens.

Clearance Type Required

None

Housing and Relocation

Housing and relocation assistance are not available for this position.