This position is part of the National Institute of Standards (NIST) Professional Research Experience (PREP) program. NIST recognizes that its research staff may wish to collaborate with researchers at academic institutions on specific projects of mutual interest, thus requires that such institutions must be the recipient of a PREP award. The PREP program requires staff from a wide range of backgrounds to work on scientific research in many areas. Employees in this position will perform technical work that underpins the scientific research of the collaboration.
Research Title:
Building a Standard Testbed for Evaluating the Promise of Next-Generation Non-volatile Memory Devices
The work will entail:
Current memory technologies have limitations in read and write speed, volatility, density, power consumption, and data retention, which become more critical as more computing tasks are performed in or near memory devices. Emerging technologies aim to overcome these limitations with higher density, lower power consumption, faster read/write speeds, better endurance, and lower cost. However, many of these technologies are analog or stochastic, requiring new testing infrastructure, benchmarks, and metrics. Device-level development often occurs in small-scale research facilities or academic labs, making systems-level demonstrations challenging. Standardizing testbeds, benchmarks, and metrics could bridge the gap between research and industry, accelerating the development of next generation memory technologies. This work will develop a testbed for prototypical and emerging memory devices and a standard set of device tests and application benchmarks for evaluating these devices. The testbed will allow the testing of devices at the mesoscale, bridging the scaling gap between individual devices and systems.
Key responsibilities will include but are not limited to:
- Creating and managing designs for specialized, high precision, high speed data acquisition and control electronics instrumentation
- Designing and specifying integrated, FPGA-based circuit board measurement systems
- Developing hardware interfaces for a custom FPGA-based prototype system to verify, validate and conduct neural network experiments
- Developing software to verify and characterize magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) and resistive RAM (RRAM) devices
- Assisting in architecting and developing digital interfaces in FPGAs, and microcontrollers for several different experiments
- Collecting and analyzing data from the data acquisition systems
- Presenting results at internal meetings and meetings with external stakeholders
- Ensuring that results, protocols, software, and documentation have been archived or otherwise transmitted to the larger organization
Qualifications
- A Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering or a related field
- At least 5 years of relevant experience
- Familiarity with hardware interfaces for Xilinx FPGA-based prototype systems
- Advanced programming ability in Python, C++, and scripting on Windows, Linux desktops and embedded Linux systems
- Ability to code in Verilog VHDL and RTL using Xilinx Vivado
- Strong oral and written communication skills
Privacy Act Statement
Authority: 15 U.S.C. § 278g-1(e)(1) and (e)(3) and 15 U.S.C. § 272(b) and (c)
Purpose: The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) hosts the Professional Research Experience Program (PREP) which is designed to provide valuable laboratory experience and financial assistance to undergraduates, post-bachelor’s degree holders, graduate students, master’s degree holders, postdocs, and faculty.
PREP is a 5-year cooperative agreement between NIST laboratories and participating PREP Universities to establish a collaborative research relationship between NIST and U.S. institutions of higher education in the following disciplines including (but may not be limited to) biochemistry, biological sciences, chemistry, computer science, engineering, electronics, materials science, mathematics, nanoscale science, neutron science, physical science, physics, and statistics. This collection of information is needed to facilitate administrative functions of the PREP Program.
Routine Uses: NIST will use the information collected to perform the requisite reviews of the applications to determine eligibility, and to meet programmatic requirements. Disclosure of this information is also subject to all the published routine uses as identified in the Privacy Act System of Records Notices: NIST-1: NIST Associates.
Disclosure: Furnishing this information is voluntary. When you submit the form, you are indicating your voluntary consent for NIST to use of the information you submit for the purpose stated.
SURA is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We believe that no one should be discriminated against because of their differences, such as age, disability, ethnicity, gender, gender identity and expression, religion, or sexual orientation. All employment decisions shall be made without regard to age, race, creed, color, religion, sex, national origin, ancestry, disability status, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, citizenship status, or any other basis as protected by federal, state, or local law.
PREP0003111