Energy & Materials Intern- XRD Advanced Analysis

United States·Los AltosInternentry

OtherIntern

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Overview

At Toyota Research Institute (TRI), we’re on a mission to improve the quality of human life. We’re developing new tools and capabilities to amplify the human experience.

Technical Tools

OtherIntern

At Toyota Research Institute (TRI), we’re on a mission to improve the quality of human life. We’re developing new tools and capabilities to amplify the human experience. To lead this transformative shift in mobility, we’ve built a world-class team advancing the state of the art in AI, robotics, driving, and material sciences.

This is a paid 12-week internship opportunity and is a hybrid, in-office role.

Here’s a glimpse into the Internship experience from some of our TRI interns!

The Team:

The Accelerated Materials Design and Discovery (AMDD) Team at Toyota Research Institute is focused on accelerating the design and discovery of new materials to enable emissions-free mobility. Materials are at the heart of clean energy technologies, such as batteries, fuel cells, solar cells, hydrogen electrolysis, and carbon capture, and discovering new materials can deliver the breakthroughs needed to displace traditional fossil fuels. Our team develops tools to overcome roadblocks in the materials discovery process using software, machine learning, robotics, and automation. Our customers are scientists and engineers advancing new batteries, fuel cell catalysts, and other materials development projects. By increasing the speed of discovery, we can iterate faster and bring new materials from the lab to the world at a much-needed, faster pace.

The Opportunity:
The intern will work within the AMDD team on a project focused on developing advanced analysis tools and pipelines for X-Ray diffraction (XRD) patterns of mixed-metal oxide thin-films. They will use and develop automated Rietveld refinement tools to label XRD patterns and understand structure-property-processing relationships across a compositionally diverse dataset. They will perform phase identification on XRD patterns ranging from unary to ternary metal-oxides, and develop pipelines to perform automatic or human-assisted labeling of experimental data. They will investigate crystallite size, texturing, and strain across the dataset. This work will contribute to the development of automated workflows for phase identification from XRD, an essential bottleneck in accelerating high-throughput materials discovery.

Scope the project to align with the core research efforts.

Be the primary driver of the technical plan (e.g., model development, analysis plan) with regular feedback from mentors.

Execute the project using TRI resources.

Present the project’s approach and findings in research meetings.

Pursuing a PhD in Materials Science, Chemistry, Physics, or related fields.

Familiar with running tabletop or synchrotron XRD experiments.

2+ years experience in performing Rietveld refinement, bonus if familiar with analyzing different materials classes.

Experience with basic data analysis in Python.

A track record of executing research projects evidenced by journal publications.

Strong communication skills and ability to work and foster collaboration across interdisciplinary teams.

Desire to work on challenging and open-ended research projects.

Experience using XRD phase identification software, e.g. DARA, GSAS-II, MAUD, Spotlight.

Experience working with thin-film metal oxides.

Comfortable working with large datasets.

Experience with code best practices and collaborative software development using git.

The pay range for this position at commencement of employment is expected to be between $45 and $65/hour for California-based roles. Base pay offered will depend on multiple individualized factors, including, but not limited to, a candidate's experience, skills, job-related knowledge, and market location. TRI offers a generous benefits package including medical, dental, and vision insurance, and paid time off benefits (including holiday pay and sick time). Additional details regarding these benefit plans will be provided if an employee receives an offer of employment.

Please reference this Candidate Privacy Notice to inform you of the categories of personal information that we collect from individuals who inquire about and/or apply to work for Toyota Research Institute, Inc. or its subsidiaries, including Toyota A.I. Ventures GP, L.P., and the purposes for which we use such personal information.

TRI is fueled by a diverse and inclusive community of people with unique backgrounds, education and life experiences. We are dedicated to fostering an innovative and collaborative environment by living the values that are an essential part of our culture. We believe diversity makes us stronger and are proud to provide Equal Employment Opportunity for all, without regard to an applicant’s race, color, creed, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, age, physical or mental disability, medical condition, religion, marital status, genetic information, veteran status, or any other status protected under federal, state or local laws.

It is unlawful in Massachusetts to require or administer a lie detector test as a condition of employment or continued employment. An employer who violates this law shall be subject to criminal penalties and civil liability. Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records for employment.