Overview
At PNNL, our core capabilities are divided among major departments that we refer to as Directorates within the Lab, focused on a specific area of scientific research or other function, with its own leadership team and dedicated budget.
Our Science & Technology directorates include National Security, Earth and Biological Sciences, Physical and Computational Sciences, and Energy and Environment. In addition, we have an Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, a Department of Energy, Office of Science user facility housed on the PNNL campus.
The Physical and Computational Sciences Directorate’s (PCSD’s) strengths in experimental, computational, and theoretical chemistry and materials science, together with our advanced computing, applied mathematics and data science capabilities, are central to the discovery mission we embrace at PNNL. But our most important resource is our people—experts across the range of scientific disciplines who team together to take on the biggest scientific challenges of our time.
The Advanced Computing, Mathematics, and Data Division (ACMDD) focuses on basic and applied computing research encompassing artificial intelligence, applied mathematics, computing technologies, and data and computational engineering. Our scientists and engineers apply end-to-end co-design principles to advance future energy-efficient computing systems and design the next generation of algorithms to analyze, model, understand, and control the behavior of complex systems in science, energy, and national security.
Responsibilities
The Future Technology Computing Group is seeking PhD interns for Spring 2026 who have strong foundations in high-performance computing, compiler technologies, and hardware design. Ideal candidates will bring knowledge of scientific distributed computing and/or electronic design automation (EDA), though these areas are not strict requirements.
This internship offers flexibility in duration (minimum of 3 months) and can be completed remotely or onsite, depending on candidate availability. Selected interns will have the opportunity to work with world-class hardware design tools and collaborate with leading researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
The expected outcome involve:
- Conduct high-quality research leading to peer-reviewed publications
- Design novel, scalable algorithms and methodologies for hardware design and electronic design automation
- Develop AI-driven design-space exploration techniques and optimization methods for hardware design and EDA workflows
- Contribute to the development, writing, and publication of peer-reviewed research demonstrating the proposed approaches
Qualifications
Minimum Qualifications:
- Candidates must be currently enrolled/matriculated in a PhD program at an accredited college
- Minimum GPA of 3.0 is required
Preferred Qualifications:
- Proven research experience, especially in relevant technical domains
- Hands-on experience with hardware synthesis methodologies
- Background in compiler technologies such as LLVM or MLIR
- Strong understanding of hardware design languages
- Experience with physical design and layout tools for tapeouts, using both commercial and open-source toolchains