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Postdoctoral Research Associate - Embodied AI Lab Automation: Vision-Guided Real Time Robotic Manipulation

Brookhaven National Laboratory

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Hours
Full time
Where
Upton, NY
Posted
Aug 17

Brookhaven National Laboratory’s National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II) is seeking a Postdoctoral Research Associate to develop an automated protein crystal harvesting system at the Center for BioMolecular Structure (CBMS).

The successful candidate will develop vision-guided robotic manipulation capabilities for detecting, tracking, and harvesting fragile micron-scale protein crystals suspended in liquid droplets. Working closely with a multidisciplinary team of crystallographers, beamline scientists, controls engineers, mechanical engineers, and data scientists, the candidate will help integrate computer vision, machine learning, and robotic manipulation into an automated crystal harvesting platform.

This is a hands-on role centered on building and deploying closed-loop perception, visual servoing, and robotic control systems in a real laboratory environment.

What you'd do

  • Develop and implement vision-guided real-time robotic manipulation methods for crystal harvesting
  • Design and deploy closed-loop perception and control pipelines using visual feedback
  • Contribute to vision-based servoing approaches for precise, real-time positioning
  • Integrate perception outputs with motion planning and execution using ROS2 and MoveIt2
  • Perform system calibration (e.g., hand-eye calibration, camera calibration) to ensure accurate 3D spatial alignment
  • Evaluate and improve system robustness, including perception uncertainty and failure modes
  • Collaborate closely with domain experts across crystallography, controls, and engineering
  • Participate in system testing, tuning, and performance evaluation
  • Document methods and results; contribute to reports, publications, and presentations
  • Ph.D. in Robotics, Computer Science, Physics, Applied Mathematics, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering or a related field

About Brookhaven National Laboratory

Brookhaven National Laboratory (www.bnl.gov) delivers discovery science and transformative technology to power and secure the nation’s future. Brookhaven Lab is a multidisciplinary laboratory with seven Nobel Prize-winning discoveries, 37 R&D 100 Awards, and more than 70 years of pioneering research. The Lab is primarily supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Science. Brookhaven Science Associates (BSA) operates and manages the Laboratory for DOE.

Starts
2026-08-06