What are the responsibilities and job description for the Research Aide - LCF - Thapa, Krishu - 2.17.25. position at UChicago Argonne, LLC?
Applications in the domain of Earth Science like climatology, weather prediction, and their effect on day-to-day design decisions involved in agriculture, transportation, and resource allocation have found success by leveraging Large Vision-based transformer models. These models can have number of parameters ranging from millions to billions making the learning step computationally expensive. The goal of this project is to explore approximation strategies targeting various modules in the classical transformer architecture while still maintaining model accuracy.
One such strategy that the incoming student will explore involves using Low Order Rank Approximation (LORA) of large parameter matrices. This approach leads to a reduction in the parameter count, thereby reducing the size of the weight matrices which makes it especially suited to take advantage of Hybrid Manycore Processing-in-memory (PIM) architectures. While this has been explored in the context of finetuning large pretrained models, it remains relatively unexplored in the space of training large models from scratch. This idea has been preliminarily explored with a proof of concept developed on a small-sized vanilla attention-based model of size ~10^6. Training iterations with LORA approximation was shown to work with ~30% lesser parameters without significant loss in accuracy. When tested on a PIM-based simulator, this translated to ~12x speedup in training time.
Education and Experience Requirements
• Must be currently enrolled full-time at an accredited institution and have completed at least one semester of schooling by the start of the program.
• Must be 18 years or older at the time the appointment begins.
• Must possess a cumulative GPA of 3.0 on a 4.0 scale.
• If accepting an offer, must pass a screening drug test.
• Must complete a satisfactory background check.
• Must reside in the United States at the time of their appointment and during their appointment at ANL.
Job Family
Graduate Student EmploymentJob Profile
Research Aide Technical - PhDWorker Type
EmployeeTime Type
Full timeScheduled Weekly Hours
40Pay Rate Type
HourlyThe expected hiring range for this position is $30.36-$45.54.Please note that the pay range information is a general guideline only. The pay offered to a selected candidate will be determined based on factors such as, but not limited to, the scope and responsibilities of the position, the qualifications of the selected candidate, business considerations, internal equity, and external market pay for comparable jobs. Additionally, comprehensive benefits are part of the total rewards package.
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EEO Information
As an equal employment opportunity employer, and in accordance with our core values of impact, safety, respect, integrity and teamwork, Argonne National Laboratory is committed to a safe and welcoming workplace that fosters collaborative scientific discovery and innovation. Argonne encourages everyone to apply for employment. Argonne is committed to nondiscrimination and considers all qualified applicants for employment without regard to any characteristic protected by law.
Argonne employees, and certain guest researchers and contractors, are subject to particular restrictions related to participation in Foreign Government Sponsored or Affiliated Activities, as defined and detailed in United States Department of Energy Order 486.1A. You will be asked to disclose any such participation in the application phase for review by Argonne's Legal Department.
All Argonne offers for appointments in the student employment category are contingent upon a background check that includes an assessment of criminal conviction history conducted on an individualized and case-by-case basis. Please be advised that Argonne positions require upon hire (or may require in the future) for the individual be to obtain a government access authorization that involves additional background check requirements. Failure to obtain or maintain such government access authorization could result in the withdrawal of a job offer or future termination of employment.
Salary : $30 - $46
