Overview

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‍Research Internships at Microsoft provide a dynamic environment for research careers with a network of world-class research labs led by globally-recognized scientists and engineers, who pursue innovation in a range of scientific and technical disciplines to help solve complex challenges in diverse fields, including computing, computer science, mathematics, economics, physics, healthcare, and the environment.

Microsoft Research Asia – Vancouver lab, located in the vibrant city of Vancouver, BC, Canada, our lab represents Microsoft Research Asia’s expansion into the Asia-Pacific region. We’re on a mission to transform the future of artificial intelligence by bridging the gap between cutting-edge general AI and the specialized, real-world applications that drive meaningful impact.

We are seeking multiple Research Interns working on artificial intelligence projects, with a wide range of potential topics ranging from multimodality, world model to Large Language Model (LLM) and computer vision. You will be working with MSR researchers across Vancouver lab, Redmond lab, Beijing lab and beyond to shape and develop the next generation of artificial intelligence. We support Research Interns to explore various sectors of artificial intelligence, as long as they align well with Vancouver’s lab or the whole MSR mission.

We encourage students with diverse research backgrounds broadly lie in artificial intelligence, including but not limited to multimodality, AI4Code, Natural Language Processing (NLP), LLM, robotics, agents and computer vision, to apply for this position.

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‍Responsibilities‍

Research Interns put inquiry and theory into practice. Alongside fellow doctoral candidates and some of the world’s best researchers, Research Interns learn, collaborate, and network for life. Research Interns not only advance their own careers, but they also contribute to exciting research and development strides. During the 12-week internship, Research Interns are paired with mentors and expected to collaborate with other Research Interns and researchers, present findings, and contribute to the vibrant life of the community. Research internships are available in all areas of research, and are offered year-round, though they typically begin in the summer.

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Additional Responsibilities

• Conduct research on state-of-the-art artificial intelligence methodologies and identify new opportunities to advance artificial intelligence from various aspects.
• Leverage interdisciplinary expertise and knowledge across NLP, LLM, computer vision, and other related domains to accelerate innovation in artificial intelligence.
• Develop, prototype, and optimize novel methodologies to tackle the core challenges of artificial intelligence.
• Disseminate research findings through publications in peer-reviewed journals, top-tier conferences, and other relevant venues, and present results both internally and externally.
• Collaborate with researchers at MSR or Microsoft and beyond to advance and propel the research process.

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‍Qualifications‍

Required Qualifications

• Currently enrolled in a master's or PhD program in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics or a related field.

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Other Requirements

• Research Interns are expected to be physically located in their manager’s Microsoft worksite location for the duration of their internship.
• In addition to the qualifications below, you’ll need to submit a minimum of two reference letters for this position as well as a cover letter and any relevant work or research samples. After you submit your application, a request for letters may be sent to your list of references on your behalf. Note that reference letters cannot be requested until after you have submitted your application, and furthermore, that they might not be automatically requested for all candidates. You may wish to alert your letter writers in advance, so they will be ready to submit your letter.

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Preferred Qualifications

• Ability to work independently and collaboratively in a dynamic and vibrant research environment.
• Willingness to embrace knowledge/technique outside your field of research.
• Solid programming skill, including prototyping, implementation and optimization.
• Experience in LLM pre-training, post-training and inference (like Megatron framework).
• Experience in world model, multimodality and AI4Code.
• Reinforcement Learning experiences and frameworks (like VeRL, rLLM).
• Proven publication track such as CVPR, ACL, ICML, ICCV, ECCV, NeurIPS, ICLR, RSS etc.

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