Foundation Model Development call for proposals — Winter 2024

Advancing the frontiers of foundation model development.

About this CFP

AWS offers a broad and deep set of services for organizations to create meaningful machine learning solutions faster. Our mission is to share our learnings and ML capabilities as fully managed services, and put them into the hands of every scientist and developer.

AWS is soliciting funding proposals related to foundation model (FM) development, including enhancements for dialogue, factual questioning and answering, text generation, document summarization, image generation, and more. Proposals should be expanding the state of the art in terms of training methods, with a focus on one of the following areas: 1) to reduce incorrect or nonsensical answers, 2) to reduce the sensitivity to tweaks to the input prompt, 3) ask clarifying questions when facing ambiguous questions, 4) develop efficiency enhancements across the training and hosting FM lifecycle.

We are inviting work that both critiques and enhances the state-of-the-art in FM, including but not limited to the following topics:

  • Reinforcement learning with human feedback
  • Scaling laws and their inverse, including for model fine-tuning
  • Novel datasets and training methods
  • Distillation with enhanced reasoning
  • Foundation models in novel modalities and domains, such as biology, manufacturing, fashion, etc.
  • Bias detection and mitigation throughout the foundation model lifecycle

AWS aims to advance foundation model development by funding the creation of open-source artifacts, datasets and code that benefit the research community at large, or impactful research that uses machine learning tools. AWS will provide credits for use on EC2 instances powered by AWS Trainium chips to help researchers develop and test solutions at scale. In addition to AWS Trainium, proposed research can be conducted using AWS AI Services, AWS ML Services (Amazon SageMaker, Amazon SageMaker Ground Truth, Amazon SageMaker Neo, and Amazon Augmented AI), and Amazon Bedrock.

Timeline

  • Submission period: January 17 - March 6, 2024 (11:59PM Pacific Time)
  • Decision letters will be sent out in October 2024

Award details

Selected Principal Investigators (PIs) may receive the following:

  • $250,000 in AWS Promotional Credits, which can be used on generally available EC2 instances that are powered by AWS Trainium chips
  • AWS Trainium training resources, including AWS tutorials and hands-on sessions with Amazon scientists and engineers

Awards are structured as one-year unrestricted gifts. The budget should include a list of expected costs specified in USD, and should not include administrative overhead costs.

Your receipt and use of AWS Promotional Credits is governed by the AWS Promotional Credit Terms and Conditions, which may be updated by AWS from time to time.

Eligibility requirements

Please refer to the ARA Program rules on the Rules and Eligibility page.

Proposal requirements

PIs are encouraged to exemplify how their proposed techniques or research studies expand the body of knowledge on pretraining and evaluation methods. PIs should either include plans for open source contributions or state that they do not plan to make any open source contributions (data or code) under the proposed effort. Proposals for this CFP should be prepared according to the proposal template and are encouraged to be a maximum of 5 pages, not including Appendices.

Selection criteria

Funding decisions are based on the creativity and quality of the scientific content, and potential impact to the research community and society at large. AWS may solicit feedback on proposal title and abstracts from select AWS customers, but final award decisions will be made solely by AWS. Proposals will be evaluated based on their express interest in open-sourcing their model artifacts, datasets, and development frameworks. Although usage of Trainium is not a requirement, proposals will be evaluated on their intention to use and explore novel hardware for AI/ML, such as Trainium.

Expectations from recipients

To the extent deemed reasonable, Award recipients should acknowledge the support from ARA. Award recipients will inform ARA of publications, presentations, code and data releases, blogs/social media posts, and other speaking engagements referencing the results of the supported research or the Award. Award recipients are expected to engage with AWS throughout the duration of their award year including, but not limited to, providing reports on the status of their research or updates and feedback to ARA via surveys. Award recipients will have the opportunity to work with ARA on an informational statement about the awarded project that may be used to generate visibility for their institutions and ARA.

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Amazon's eCommerce Foundation (eCF) organization provides the core technologies that drive and power Amazon's Stores, Digital, and Other (SDO) businesses. Millions of customer page views and orders per day are enabled by the systems eCF builds from the ground up. CloudTune, within eCF, empowers growth and business agility needs by automatically and efficiently managing AWS capacity and business processes needed to safely meet Amazon's customer demand. CloudTune serves its primary customers, internal software teams, through forecast-driven automation of cost controllership, capacity management, and scaling. We predict expected load, and drive procurement and allocation of AWS capacity for new product launches and high-velocity events like Prime Day and Cyber Monday. CloudTune is looking for a Data Scientist to join our forecasting and optimization team. The team develops sophisticated algorithms that combine machine learning-based demand forecasting with mathematical optimization to solve large-scale capacity planning problems under uncertainty. We work with massive datasets — spanning thousands of availability zone and instance family combinations across global regions — to determine optimal resource allocation strategies that balance infrastructure holding costs against service availability requirements. These models directly inform multi-million dollar capacity investment decisions and drive automated procurement, retention, and release policies across Amazon's compute infrastructure. As a Data Scientist in CloudTune, you will work with other scientists, software engineers, data engineers, and product managers on a variety of important research problems in the areas of stochastic optimization, time series modeling, and operations research. You will work on statistical problems with a high level of ambiguity. You will analyze and process large amounts of data, develop new algorithms and improve existing approaches based on statistical models, machine learning algorithms and big data solutions to automatically scale Amazon’s compute infrastructure, optimizing the balance between availability risk and cost efficiency for all of Amazon businesses. Key job responsibilities - Process and analyze large data sets, mining additional data sources as needed - Build statistical models and drive scalable solutions for multi-year capacity demand forecasting horizons - Create, enhance, and maintain technical documentation, and present to other scientists and business leaders - Process and analyze large-scale operational data to identify patterns and inform model development - Create, enhance, and maintain technical documentation, and present research findings to scientists, engineering teams, and senior leadership
US, CA, Sunnyvale
Fauna Robotics is seeking a Principal Applied Scientist to lead the development of evaluation frameworks and data collection protocols that measure, stress-test, and improve robot behavior across real-world tasks. Operating at the intersection of robotics, machine learning, and human-in-the-loop systems, this role owns the infrastructure and methodologies that connect teleoperation, evaluation, and learning — shaping how policies are validated and how high-quality datasets are generated to accelerate system performance. Key job responsibilities What you'll do: - Build and own evaluation frameworks that measure and stress-test robot behavior across real-world tasks - Design data collection protocols that generate high-quality datasets to accelerate system performance - Connect teleoperation, evaluation, and learning systems into cohesive, measurable infrastructure - Translate ambiguous capability goals into actionable, measurable evaluation systems What we're looking for: - A highly experimental, systems-oriented scientist comfortable working across software, robotics, and data pipelines - Deep expertise in machine learning and robotics, with a track record of building evaluation methodologies About the team Fauna Robotics, an Amazon company, is building capable, safe, and genuinely delightful robots for everyday life. Our goal is simple: make robots people actually want to live and interact with in everyday human spaces. We believe that future won’t arrive until building for robotics becomes far more accessible. Today, too much effort is spent reinventing the fundamentals. We’re changing that by developing tightly integrated hardware and software systems that make it faster, safer, and more intuitive to create real-world robotic products. Our work spans the full stack: mechanical design, control systems, dynamic modeling, and intelligent software. The focus is not just functionality, but experience. We’re building robots that feel responsive, expressive, and genuinely useful. At Fauna, you’ll work at the frontier of this space, helping define how robots move, manipulate, and interact with people in natural environments. It’s an opportunity to solve hard problems across hardware and software with a team focused on making robotics accessible and joyful to build. If you care about making robotics real for everyone and building systems that are as delightful as they are capable, we’re interested in hearing from you. an opportunity to solve hard problems across hardware and software with a team focused on making robotics accessible and joyful to build. If you care about making robotics real for everyone and building systems that are as delightful as they are capable, we’re interested in hearing from you.
US, WA, Seattle
At Amazon, security is central to maintaining customer trust and delivering delightful customer experiences. Our mission is to prevent denied entities from transacting with Amazon businesses. We build automatic mechanisms to detect and prevent prohibited transactions with denied entities using a diverse set of algorithms and machine learning techniques. We screen over a billion events every day and develop algorithms which are able to scale and detect suspicious entities . We are still Day 1 and have an exciting road map to build Machine Learning (ML) and Generative AI (LLM) powered detection and resolution systems to help scale Amazon for years to come. We are seeking an Applied Scientist to join our team and help tackle challenging problems at the forefront of machine learning and artificial intelligence. Working closely with a multidisciplinary team of engineers, data scientists, and domain experts, you will play a crucial role in defining innovative ML/AI-powered customer experiences and solutions. If you have an entrepreneurial mindset, the technical depth to deliver impactful results, and a passion for innovation, we want to hear from you. Key job responsibilities In this role, you will: • Drive the research, design, and development of novel ML/AI models and systems to power critical products and services • Collaborate cross-functionally to deeply understand business requirements, customer needs, and technical constraints • Rapidly prototype, test, and iterate on ML/AI solutions, iterating quickly based on data and feedback • Communicate complex technical concepts to technical and non-technical stakeholders • Stay up-to-date on the latest advancements in AI/ML and identify opportunities to apply emerging techniques A day in the life - Starting the day by reviewing the latest model performance metrics and identifying areas for improvement - Brainstorming new architectures and approaches with your cross-functional team during a whiteboard session - Diving deep into a complex dataset, leveraging advanced statistical and AI techniques to uncover hidden insights - Prototyping a new model and running a series of experiments to optimize its performance - Preparing a presentation to pitch your latest research findings and recommendations to product and engineering leaders - Mentoring junior scientists, providing guidance on coding best practices and problem-solving strategies About the team Why Amazon Security At Amazon, security is central to maintaining customer trust and delivering delightful customer experiences. Our organization is responsible for creating and maintaining a high bar for security across all of Amazon’s products and services. Work/Life Balance We value work-life harmony. Achieving success at work should never come at the expense of sacrifices at home, which is why flexible work hours and arrangements are part of our culture. When we feel supported in the workplace and at home, there’s nothing we can’t achieve. Inclusive Team Culture In Amazon Security, it’s in our nature to learn and be curious. Ongoing DEI events and learning experiences inspire us to continue learning and to embrace our uniqueness. Addressing the toughest security challenges requires that we seek out and celebrate a diversity of ideas, perspectives, and voices. Training and Career growth We’re continuously raising our performance bar as we strive to become Earth’s Best Employer. That’s why you’ll find endless knowledge-sharing, training, and other career-advancing resources here to help you develop into a better-rounded professional.
US, WA, Seattle
Pricing is one of the most consequential decisions Amazon makes — and the science behind it needs to be causally rigorous, not just predictive. The P2 Optimization Science (P2OS) team builds the machine learning systems that power Amazon's pricing decisions at scale: demand lift models, customer lifetime value frameworks, and the experimentation infrastructure that validates whether our pricing changes actually work. We're hiring an Applied Scientist to own causal inference at the intersection of ML and pricing experimentation. This role exists because our team has identified a real gap: the methodological bridge between econometric analysis (owned by our economists) and production-scale ML pipelines (owned by our engineers) needs a practitioner who lives in both worlds. You'll build CATE estimation models, design analysis workflows for pricing weblabs, and develop the reusable causal ML infrastructure that the broader team — including non-ML scientists — can rely on. This is not a research role. The bias here is toward shipping production-quality causal pipelines with real downstream business impact. You'll measure success by what changes in LTV estimates, what pricing errors your models help avoid, and whether the economists on your team can actually use what you build. If you're a scientist who wants to work on hard causal identification problems in a high-stakes production environment — and who finds satisfaction in making rigorous methods accessible to a broader team — this role is for you.
US, MA, North Reading
Amazon Robotics is transforming warehouse automation through edge AI and machine learning applied to real-world robotics challenges. We're seeking a Research Scientist to advance our mobile manipulation capabilities by developing novel learning-based approaches that enable robots to navigate and manipulate objects in dynamic fulfillment environments. This role offers the opportunity to conduct original research and translate state-of-the-art findings into production systems operating at Amazon's unprecedented scale. Key job responsibilities Research and Algorithm Development: Formulate novel research problems in robot learning and manipulation, design new model architectures, validate hypotheses through rigorous experimentation, and advance the state of the art in learning-based robotics. Data Strategy and Pipeline Design: Define data requirements for research initiatives, design scalable collection and curation strategies, establish governance and provenance standards, and build reusable pipelines ensuring data quality and reproducibility. Experimentation and Scientific Validation: Design and execute experiments in simulation and real-world embodiments, develop evaluation methodologies and benchmarks, perform ablation studies and statistical analyses, and iterate systematically to advance model performance. Prototyping and Research Infrastructure: Develop clean, well-documented research codebases, build experimentation frameworks and evaluation tooling, contribute to shared training infrastructure, and implement interfaces for broader robotics integration. Scientific Leadership and Publication: Drive an independent research agenda aligned with team objectives, publish at top-tier venues (e.g., RSS, CoRL, ICRA, NeurIPS), identify research gaps through literature reviews, and present findings via technical reports and talks. Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with scientists, engineers, and leaders across teams to translate research into deployable solutions, mentor junior researchers, contribute to the team's scientific culture, and support integration with robotics hardware teams. A day in the life If you are not sure that every qualification on the list above describes you exactly, we'd still love to hear from you! At Amazon, we value people with unique backgrounds, experiences, and skillsets. If you’re passionate about this role and want to make an impact on a global scale, please apply! About the team Are you inspired by invention? Is problem solving through teamwork in your DNA? Do you like the idea of seeing how your work impacts the bigger picture? Answer yes to any of these and you’ll fit right in here at Amazon Robotics. We are a smart, collaborative team of enthusiastic doers that work passionately to apply innovative advances in robotics and software to solve real-world challenges that will transform our customers’ experiences in ways we can’t even image yet. We invent new improvements every day. We are Amazon Robotics and we will give you the tools and support you need to invent with us in ways that are rewarding, fulfilling and fun!
US, NY, New York
Amazon Advertising is one of Amazon's fastest growing and most profitable businesses. Amazon's advertising portfolio helps merchants, retail vendors, and brand owners succeed via native advertising, which grows incremental sales of their products sold through Amazon. The primary goals are to help shoppers discover new products they love, be the most efficient way for advertisers to meet their business objectives, and build a sustainable business that continuously innovates on behalf of customers. Our products and solutions are strategically important to enable our Retail and Marketplace businesses to drive long-term growth. We deliver billions of ad impressions and millions of clicks and break fresh ground in product and technical innovations every day! The Creative X team within Amazon Advertising time aims to democratize access to high-quality creatives (text, audio, images, videos) by building AI-driven solutions for advertisers. To accomplish this, we are investing in latent-diffusion models, large language models (LLM), generative audio (music and speech synthesis), computer vision (CV), reinforced learning (RL) and related methods. You will be part of a close-knit team of applied scientists and product managers who are highly collaborative and at the top of their respective fields. We are looking for talented Applied Scientists who have a proven record of developing Generative AI science at the highest standards of innovation, and experience working and delivering product-ready code, are adept at a variety of skills, especially with LLMs, generative audio, computer vision, latent diffusion or related foundational models that will accelerate our plans to generate high-quality creatives on behalf of advertisers. Every member of the team is expected to build customer (advertiser) facing features, contribute to the collaborative spirit within the team, publish, patent, and bring innovation research to raise the bar within the team.
US, NY, New York
Amazon Advertising is one of Amazon's fastest growing businesses. Amazon's advertising portfolio helps merchants, retail vendors, and brand owners succeed via native advertising, which grows incremental sales of their products sold through Amazon. The primary goals are to help shoppers discover new products they love, be the most efficient way for advertisers to meet their business objectives, and build a sustainable business that continuously innovates on behalf of customers. Our products and solutions are strategically important to enable our Retail and Marketplace businesses to drive long-term growth. We deliver billions of ad impressions and millions of clicks and break fresh ground in product and technical innovations every day! The Creative X team within Amazon Advertising time aims to democratize access to high-quality creatives (audio, images, videos, text) by building AI-driven solutions for advertisers. To accomplish this, we are investing in understanding how best users can leverage Generative AI methods such as latent-diffusion models, large language models (LLM), generative audio (music and speech synthesis), computer vision (CV), reinforced learning (RL) and related. As an Applied Scientist you will be part of a close-knit team of other applied scientists, engineers and product managers who are highly collaborative and at the top of their respective fields. We are looking for talented Applied Scientists who are adept at a variety of skills, especially at the interface of how users can use state-of-the-art generative music and audio, computer vision, latent diffusion or related foundational models that will accelerate our plans to generate high-quality creatives on behalf of advertisers. Every member of the team is expected to build customer (advertiser) facing features, contribute to the collaborative spirit within the team, publish, patent, and bring innovative research to raise the bar within the team. You will: - Drive the invention and development of novel methods for the use of Generative AI in ads - Work closely and integrate end-to-end proof-of-concept Machine Learning projects that have a high degree of ambiguity, scale and complexity. - Build interface-oriented systems that use Machine Learning models, perform proof-of-concept, experiment, optimize, and deploy your models into production; work closely with software engineers to assist in productionizing your ML models. - Run A/B experiments, gather data, and perform statistical analysis. - Establish scalable, efficient, automated processes for large-scale data analysis, machine-learning model development, model validation and serving. - Mentor and help recruit Applied Scientists to the team. - Present results and explain methods to senior leadership. - Willingness to publish research at internal and external top scientific venues. - Write and pursue IP submissions. Key job responsibilities This role is focused on developing Machine Learning and Generative AI methods to augment generative imagery and videos. You will develop new paradigms that will impact how users can engage and benefit from GenAI and that are at the core of advertising-facing tools that we are launching. You will also work on development of ML and GenAI models. You will conduct literature reviews to stay on the top of the field. You will regularly engage with product managers, who will partner with you to productize your work. About the team
US, NY, New York
We are seeking an Applied Scientist to develop and optimize Visual Inertial Odometry (VIO) and sensor fusion systems for our intelligent robots. In this role, you will design, implement, and deploy state estimation and tracking algorithms that enable robots to understand their position and motion in real time, even in challenging and dynamic environments. You will own the full pipeline from algorithm development through embedded deployment, ensuring that perception systems run efficiently on resource-constrained robotic hardware. You will also leverage modern machine learning approaches to push the boundaries of classical perception methods, combining learned representations with geometric techniques to achieve robust, real-time performance. This is a deeply hands-on role. You will work directly with sensors, hardware, and real-world data, while prototyping, testing, and iterating in physical environments. The ideal candidate has strong foundations in VIO and sensor fusion, practical experience optimizing algorithms for embedded platforms, and familiarity with how modern deep learning is transforming perception. Key job responsibilities - Design and implement Visual Inertial Odometry algorithms for robust real-time state estimation on robotic platforms like Sprout - Develop multi-sensor fusion pipelines integrating cameras, IMUs, and other sensing modalities for accurate pose tracking - Optimize perception and tracking algorithms for deployment on embedded hardware (e.g., ARM, GPU-accelerated edge devices) under strict latency and power constraints - Apply modern ML-based perception techniques (learned features, depth estimation, neural odometry) to complement and improve classical geometric approaches - Build and maintain calibration, evaluation, and benchmarking infrastructure for perception systems - Collaborate with hardware, controls, and navigation teams to integrate perception outputs into the robot’s autonomy stack - Lead technical projects from research prototyping through production deployment
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Amazon Research Awards

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