Research Scientist Intern, Soft Wearable Haptic Displays (PhD)
Oculus

The RL Research Team pioneers research into new technologies to solve difficult technical challenges for our AR, VR, and MR products. We are developing all the technologies needed to enable breakthrough AR glasses and VR headsets, including optics and displays, computer vision, audio, graphics, brain-computer interface, haptic interaction, eye/hand/face/body tracking, perception science, and true telepresence. The team brings together a world-class team of researchers, developers, and engineers to create the future of AR and VR, which together will become as universal and essential as smartphones and personal computers are today.

Research Scientist Intern, Soft Wearable Haptic Displays (PhD) Responsibilities:

• Research next generation soft haptic and robotic devices with an emphasis on both theory and physical embodiment of the new concepts.
• Application areas include: Electromechanical devices, Polymeric materials synthesis and characterization, Functional garments and textiles, Soft mechanism design (e.g. fluidic actuators), Wearable biosensors, Machine learning of wearable robotics, Systems level soft robotics integration, Micro fluidics fabrication and characterization.
• The position will have an emphasis on fundamental scientific and engineering questions related to the undefined behavior of soft wearable technologies to inform new concepts and the perceptual impact of those concepts.
• Collaborate with the larger Reality Labs team and provide creative solutions to challenges in soft robotics and active material technologies.
• Communicate or publish research activities and findings to collaborators across a variety of disciplines.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Currently has, or is in the process of obtaining, a PhD degree in robotics, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, bioengineering, materials science, fiber science or related field with soft matter focus.
• 1+ years experience with hardware prototyping, polymeric additive manufacturing, materials synthesis and formulation, building functional garments, computational design, soft matter modeling, or materials testing.
• Interpersonal skills: cross-group collaboration and cross-culture collaboration.
• Must obtain work authorization in the country of employment at the time of hire and maintain ongoing work authorization during employment.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Demonstrated experience via an internship, work experience, or widely used contributions to open source projects.
• Proven track record of achieving significant results as demonstrated by grants, fellowships, patents, as well as first-authored publications at leading workshops or conferences such as RoboSoft, ICRA, IROS, CHI, UIST, Haptics, Siggraph, or similar.
• Demonstrated experience with novel soft actuators and sensors for closed-loop control of haptic displays.
• Novel haptic rendering techniques for HCI.
• Intent to return to degree-program after the completion of the internship/co-op.