FirstPrinciples Research Fellow

FirstPrinciples is a non-profit organization focused on developing an autonomous AI Physicist to explore the fundamental laws of the universe. The Research Fellow will contribute directly to this initiative by designing and implementing state-of-the-art methods and applications that enhance the AI Physicist's capabilities in reasoning about physics.

Responsibilities:

• Research, design, and test novel model architectures that combine academic literature, NLP, symbolic reasoning, and structured scientific workflows
• Prototype and build embedding representations for physical concepts, mathematical objects, and logical structures, enabling models to reason over equations, abstractions, and scientific constraints rather than surface text alone
• Investigate alternatives to transformer-based architectures and deliver concrete recommendations
• Design and run targeted experiments to evaluate new architectural ideas, using empirical results to guide the development of next-generation model architectures
• Develop reinforcement learning loops that enable models to run internal and independent thought experiments
• Design and automate scalable data ingestion pipelines that aggregate scientific literature, metadata, equations, and experimental data
• Create custom benchmarks to measure physical understanding, mathematical reasoning, and failure modes in scientific reasoning and abstraction
• Refine and release curated datasets and baselines once internal validation is complete
• Run and track model training jobs while managing compute usage and budget constraints
• Design sandbox environments for controlled autonomous exploration
• Build evaluation frameworks using visual and statistical tools to identify strengths and blind spots
• Implement tests and guardrails that flag low-quality or unsafe outputs
• Maintain internal issue tracking with clear failure modes and fixes
• Work closely with engineers to ensure research is feasible and production-ready
• Communicate technical trade-offs clearly to non-technical stakeholders
• Present regular research updates tied to defined milestones