Social
Philip Resnik, standing in the background, and a colleague in the Computational Linguistics and Information Processing Laboratory on the Maryland campus are seen collaborating together while looking at display screens
Philip Resnik, standing, is a computational linguist at the University of Maryland. He is working to apply machine learning techniques to social media data in an attempt to make predictions about important aspects of mental health.
Credit: John T. Consoli / University of Maryland
Machine learning

How a university researcher is using machine learning to help identify suicide risk

Using social media data, the University of Maryland's Philip Resnik aims to help clinicians prioritize individuals who may need immediate attention.

By Mariana Lenharo
February 9, 2021
7 min read
Share

Philip Resnik was a computer science undergrad at Harvard when he accompanied a friend to her linguistics class. Through that course, he discovered a fascination with language. Given his background, he naturally approached the topic from a computational perspective.

AWS re:Invent 2022: Impact through cutting-edge ML research with Amazon Research Awards

Now a professor at the University of Maryland in the Department of Linguistics and the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, Resnik has been doing research in computational linguistics for more than 30 years. One of his goals is to use technology to make progress on social problems. Influenced by his wife, clinical psychologist Rebecca Resnik, he became especially interested in applying computational models to identify linguistic signals related to mental health.

“Language is a crucial window into people's mental state,” Resnik said.

Gari Clifford is the tenured chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Emory University and a professor of biomedical engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. Clifford, an Amazon Research Award recipient, is seen here speaking at Emory University.
Related content
Using machine learning to reduce costs, increase accuracy, and improve access in healthcare
Gari Clifford, the chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Emory University and an Amazon Research Award recipient, wants to transform healthcare.

With the support of Amazon’s Machine Learning Research Award (MLRA), he and his colleagues are currently applying machine learning techniques to social media data in an attempt to make predictions about important aspects of mental health, including the risk of suicide.

Developing more sophisticated tools to prevent suicide is a pressing issue in the United States. Suicide was the second leading cause of death among people between the ages of 10 and 34 in 2018, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Among all ages that year, more than 48,000 Americans died by suicide. Resnik noted the COVID-19 pandemic has further increased the urgency of this problem via an “echo pandemic.” That term has been used by some in the mental health community to characterize the long-term mental health effects of sustained isolation, anxiety, and disruption of normal life.

The value of social media data

Machine learning research projects on mental health historically have relied on various types of data, such as health records and clinical interviews. But Resnik and other researchers have found that social media provides an additional layer of information, giving a glimpse into the everyday experiences of patients when they are not being evaluated by a mental healthcare provider.

Mindful of privacy and ethical concerns, Resnik envisions a system where patients who are already seeing a mental health professional are given the option to consent for access to their social media data for this monitoring purpose.

Philip Resnik, a professor at the University of Maryland in the Department of Linguistics and the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, is seen standing in a hallway
Philip Resnik says one of his goals is to use technology to make progress on social problems. “Language is a crucial window into people's mental state,” he says.
Credit: John T. Consoli / University of Maryland

“Healthcare visits, where problems can be identified, are relatively few and far between compared to what so many people are doing every day, posting about their lived experience on social media,” Resnik said. The idea is to use social media data to discover patterns that are predictive, for example, of someone with schizophrenia having a psychotic episode, or someone with depression having a suicidal crisis.

A stock image shows a person dressed as a doctor holding a chest x-ray
Related content
A human-centered approach to AI-enhanced medical imaging diagnosis
ARA recipient is using artificial intelligence to help doctors make decisions based on radiological data.

The project is still in the technology research stage, said Resnik, but the ultimate goal is to have a practical impact by allowing mental healthcare professionals to access previously unavailable information about the people that they're helping treat.

These predictions are made possible via supervised machine learning. In this scenario, the model utilizes datasets comprised of social media posts to learn how to identify patterns or properties to make a prediction after being given a large number of correct examples.

In order to do this work, Resnik and colleagues are using social media data donated by volunteers using two sites, “OurDataHelps” and “OurDataHelps: UMD”, as well as data from Reddit. All their work receives careful ethical review and they take extra steps to anonymize the users, such as automatically masking anything that resembles a name or a location.

Prioritizing at-risk individuals

Previous work that used machine learning to make mental health predictions has generally aimed to make binary distinctions. For example: Should this person be flagged as at risk or not? However, Resnik and his team believe that simply flagging people who might require attention is not enough.

Jon Tamir_Lab_Photos_0001.jpg
Related content
How new machine learning techniques could improve MRI scans
Amazon Research Award recipient Jonathan Tamir is focusing on deriving better images faster.

In the United States, more than 120 million people live in areas with mental healthcare provider shortages, according to the Bureau of Health Workforce. “This means that even if they know they need help with a mental health problem, they are likely to have a hard time seeing the mental healthcare provider, because there aren’t enough providers,” Resnik noted.

What happens when software identifies even more people that might need help in an already overburdened system? The answer, he said, is to find ways to help prioritize the cases that need the most attention the soonest.

You have a pipeline where, at every stage that you assess the patient, there might be an appropriate intervention. The idea is to find the right level of care across the population, as opposed to simply making a binary distinction.
Philip Resnik

This is why Resnik’s team shifted their emphasis from simple classification to prioritization. In one approach, a healthcare provider would be informed which patients are more at risk and require the most immediate attention. The system would not only rank the most at-risk individuals, but also rank, for each of them, which social media posts were most indicative of that person’s mental state. This way, when the provider got an alert, they wouldn’t have to go through possibly hundreds of social media updates to better evaluate that person’s condition. Instead, they would be shown the most concerning posts up front.

Resnik and colleagues described this in a recent paper. Although the idea hasn’t yet been put into practice by clinicians, it was developed in consultation with experts from organizations such as the American Association of Suicidology who provided valuable input and feedback into how these technologies should be designed to be both effective and ethical.

Resnik’s team is also working on another approach to patient prioritization, a system that would rely on multiple stages of patient assessment. For example, patients’ social media data could be evaluated unintrusively in the first stage. A subset of individuals then might be invited to go through to a second, interactive, stage, such as responding to questions through an automatic system where their answers and properties of their speech, for example their speaking rate and the quality of their voice, would be evaluated through machine learning techniques. Among those, the individuals at most immediate or serious risk could be directed to a third stage of evaluation that would involve a human being.

“You have a pipeline where, at every stage that you assess the patient, there might be an appropriate intervention,” Resnik said. “The idea is to find the right level of care across the population, as opposed to simply making a binary distinction.”

Both of these approaches have been supported by the MLRA. “It has been helpful not only in terms of the AWS credits to build infrastructure and the funding for graduate students, but also the engagement with people at Amazon,” said Resnik. “We’ve had active conversations with people inside AWS, who are themselves responsible for building important tools. The relationship that I have, as a researcher, with Amazon has been enormously helpful.”

Building a secure environment for sensitive data

Previous funding from the MLRA also helped sponsor the development of a secure computational environment to house mental health data. This is an important step to advance research in machine learning for mental health, as one of the main obstacles in this field is obtaining access to this very sensitive data.

The goal of this joint project between the University of Maryland and the independent research institution NORC at the University of Chicago: give qualified researchers ethical and secure access to mental health datasets. The resulting Mental Health Data Enclave, hosted on AWS, is designed to let researchers access datasets remotely from their own computers and work with them inside a secure environment, without ever being able to copy or send the data elsewhere.

The enclave will be used this spring for an exercise at the Computational Linguistics and Clinical Psychology Workshop (held in conjunction with NAACL), an event that brings together clinicians and technologists. A sensitive mental health dataset will be shared among different teams, who will work on it within the enclave to solve a problem. The solutions will then be discussed at the workshop.

Resnik said that the AWS award will make it possible for all the teams to ethically access and work on this sensitive data. “I view this as a proof of concept for what I hope will become a lasting paradigm going forward, where we use secure environments to get the community working in a shared way on sensitive data,” he added. “This is the way that real progress has been made for decades in other research areas.”  Crucially, though, Resnik observes, research progress is not an end in itself: ultimately it needs to feed into practical and ethical deployment within the mental healthcare ecosystem. As he and collaborating suicide prevention experts noted in a recent article, “The key to progress is closer and more consistent engagement of the suicidology and technology communities.”

Research areas
Tags
About the Author
Mariana Lenharo
Mariana is a science and health journalist based in Brazil.

Related content

Work with us

See more jobs See more jobs
Senior Applied Scientist, Amazon Connect
US, NY, New York
Are you excited about applying machine learning and statistical modeling to real-world systems that serve millions of customers? Amazon Connect is a cloud-based contact center service that helps businesses deliver personal, efficient customer experiences. Our team of scientists and engineers builds the AI and ML capabilities that power contact center operations and optimization. We are looking for a Senior Applied Scientist to tackle scientifically complex challenges in areas such as stochastic modeling, queueing theory, anomaly detection, and optimization. In this role, you will design and deploy novel ML models and algorithms that directly improve how businesses interact with their customers. You will work at the intersection of research and production, turning ambiguous problems into scalable solutions that shape the future of cloud-based customer service. Key job responsibilities - Design and deploy novel machine learning models and algorithms to solve complex problems in contact center operations, including forecasting, routing optimization, and anomaly detection. - Lead the scientific agenda for your team by identifying new research opportunities, proposing initiatives, and driving them from concept through production deployment. - Collaborate with engineering teams to architect and implement scalable ML systems, personally contributing significant portions of the critical scientific components. - Mentor fellow scientists and engineers through code reviews, design discussions, and scientific guidance, raising the overall technical bar of the team. - Evaluate and advance the team's ML methodology by benchmarking against current academic and industry research, and by publishing findings internally and externally when appropriate. A day in the life You might start your morning reviewing experiment results from a new forecasting model, then join a design session with engineers to discuss how to integrate it into the production pipeline. After lunch, you could be whiteboarding a novel approach to a queueing optimization problem with a fellow scientist, followed by a code review for a teammate. You will regularly present your research findings to stakeholders across the organization and contribute to the team's publication efforts. About the team Our team within Amazon Connect focuses on building intelligent, ML-driven capabilities that help businesses run their contact centers more effectively. We work closely with product, engineering, and science partners to turn research ideas into features that customers rely on every day. We value curiosity, collaboration, and scientific rigor, and we are investing in new AI capabilities that will continue to transform the customer service industry. If you want to see your research make a tangible impact at scale, this is the place to do it.
Applied Scientist I, Amazon Shipping
IN, HR, Gurugram
Building large-scale forecasting and optimization systems that power Amazon’s global transportation network and directly impact customer experience and cost. Key job responsibilities 1. Guide model and system design across a range of techniques, including tree-based models, deep learning (LSTMs, transformers), LLMs, and reinforcement learning. 2. Ensure models are production-ready, scalable, and robust through close partnership with stakeholders. 3. Partner with Product, Operations, and Engineering leaders to enable proactive decision-making and corrective actions. 4 Own end-to-end business metrics, directly influencing customer experience, cost optimization, and network reliability. 5. Help contribute to the broader ML community through publications, conference submissions, and internal knowledge sharing.
Applied Scientist, Customer360
US, WA, Seattle
What happens when you give AI the ability to remember? Not cached responses — real structured memory that compounds over time and transfers across contexts. We're building the science behind this, and we need researchers who want to own the problem end-to-end. This is a founding role on a new team. You won't inherit models or maintain someone else's pipeline. You'll define the research direction, run experiments at scale, and ship what works directly to production. Key job responsibilities As an Applied Scientist in our team, you will be responsible for the research, design, and development of new AI technologies for knowledge acquisition and retrieval. You will adopt or invent new machine learning and analytical techniques in the realm of information retrieval, knowledge representation, and large language models. Specific responsibilities include: 1. Design and implement novel approaches to knowledge extraction from heterogeneous, unstructured data sources at organizational scale. 2. Build retrieval systems that match intent to relevant knowledge across domains — solving the "right memory at the right time" problem. 3. Own the quality of memory generation: what to capture, how to structure it, when to surface it, and when to let it decay. 4. Run large-scale experiments using Amazon's compute infrastructure and massive real-world datasets. 5. Develop evaluation frameworks for a system where "quality" means something new — right knowledge, right context, right confidence level. 6. Collaborate with engineers to move from research prototype to production system in weeks, not quarters. 7. Invent new approaches to temporal knowledge management — how memories age, conflict, and compound over time. 8. Publish and patent novel approaches to knowledge acquisition and retrieval at top-tier venues. A day in the life You will solve real-world problems by getting and analyzing large amounts of data, generate insights and opportunities, execute experiments, and develop statistical and ML models. The team is driven by business needs, which requires collaboration with other Scientists, Engineers, and Product Managers across the organization. You get to influence stakeholders with clear communication skills. You innovate on behalf of the customer and strategically build features. You will mentor junior members and help them grow. About the team We're a new team within Personalization, focused on a different kind of recommendation: not "what product should this customer see" but "what knowledge should this AI use right now." Same scale, same rigor, entirely new problem space. The science is at the intersection of information retrieval, knowledge representation, and LLM reasoning — and the right approach hasn't been established yet. The team values innovation and offers a safe place to try, fail, and learn while fostering a culture of continuous improvement. Everyone is a leader and owner for everything we do as a team. We offer creative space with an entrepreneurial work environment focusing on customer obsession.
Applied Scientist, SCOT FO - SnT
ES, B, Barcelona
How does Amazon decide which fulfillment center ships your order, which truck carries it, and how to keep promises across hundreds of millions of packages daily? How does it decide how many trucks and how much labor are required to ship orders across the network? SCOT Fulfillment Optimization (FO) owns the optimization and forecasting science behind these decisions. We are seeking Applied Scientists to join the FO Science & Tech team in Barcelona (alternatively: Luxembourg or London) with a strong academic background in optimization, machine learning, and/or time-series forecasting. • You will design and build state-of-the-art machine learning and optimization models that power Amazon's fulfillment decisions at an unprecedented scale across two core scientific pillars: • Large-Scale Optimization and Planning: Designing planning systems for order assignment and resource utilization, while balancing multi-objective cost-speed tradeoffs to enable controllers to steer millions of shipments per hour optimally. • Demand Forecasting & Predictive ML: Developing time-series forecasts for customer demand, incorporating contextual information (weather, sales, order properties), and modeling uncertainty for core planning systems. Basic qualifications • PhD in Operations Research, Applied Mathematics, Computer Science, or related field (or equivalent experience) • Strong programming skills (Python preferred; experience with optimization solvers a plus) • Research experience in one or more: • Large-scale mathematical programming (LP, MIP, decomposition methods) • Combinatorial optimization (assignment, scheduling, network flows) • Multi-objective optimization and control • Large-scale time-series forecasting (GenAI models, probabilistic forecasting, uncertainty quantification) • Causal inference (spatiotemporal causal modeling, offline policy evaluation) Preferred qualifications • Experience building optimization systems that run in production at scale • Being comfortable with ambiguity and fast iteration cycles • Publications in relevant venues Key job responsibilities Design and implement optimization and forecasting models for large-scale fulfillment problems, from order assignment to network flow control. Build research prototypes end-to-end: from problem formulation through scalable implementation to production validation. Analyse complex tradeoffs (cost, speed, capacity, accuracy) and translate findings into actionable recommendations for leadership and operations teams. Collaborate with engineers to bring science solutions into production systems serving millions of customer orders daily. A day in the life You formulate an optimization or forecasting problem on a whiteboard with teammates, then prototype it in Python with real data by the afternoon. You run experiments against production-scale datasets, iterate on the model, and present results to stakeholders who will use them to make network decisions next week. Some days you dive deep into solver performance; other days you're explaining a Pareto frontier to an operations leader. You collaborate with large engineering and product teams to bring your solutions into systems serving millions of customers. Alongside fast-turnaround prototypes, you own long-term research bets, the kind that reshape how Amazon's fulfillment network operates at scale. Your work goes live. About the team SCOT Fulfillment Optimization Science & Tech (FO SnT) is the applied research team behind Amazon's fulfillment decision-making systems. We decide how orders get assigned to warehouses, how capacity is allocated across the network, and how cost and speed tradeoffs are managed in real time, at global scale. Our models influence billions of euros in annual operational spend. They protect sites from overload during peak, reduce transportation costs and CO2 emissions, and ensure customers receive their packages when promised. Leadership relies on our science to make investment decisions worth hundreds of millions. We are practitioners of large-scale optimization: MIP formulations, decomposition methods, approximation algorithms, and parallelisation. We use machine learning where it sharpens our decisions, including forecasting, learned heuristics, and multi-armed bandits. We pick the right tool for the problem, not the fashionable one. You will work alongside Senior and Principal scientists, and collaborate with Amazon Scholars and academic partners who bring frontier research into our applied problems. We code our prototypes to be production-ready and collaborate with large engineering teams to ship systems, not papers. Above all, we have fun solving hard real-world problems at real-world speed, failing, learning, and shipping along the way.
Data Scientist II, Device Economics
US, CA, Sunnyvale
We are seeking Data Scientist II with strong science application skills to join our Device Economics team. This role will focus primarily on Amazon's innovative devices and services (e.g. Echo Family of Devices), working at the intersection of economic modeling, forecasting science, and business strategy. The ideal candidate will be responsible for pre-launch forecasts, annualized overall forecasts, identifying substitution patterns, and partnering closely with product managers and marketing managers to understand the evolution of the Devices portfolio. Key job responsibilities Forecasting & Modeling 1. Develop and maintain pre-launch forecasts and annualized overall forecasts for Amazon Devices 2. Identify and model substitution patterns across the device portfolio 3. Build economic and financial models to support demand planning and business decisions 4. Formulate relevant analytical frameworks to address key economic issues in device forecasting Science Communication & Collaboration 1. Explain complex science models and methodologies to non-technical stakeholders including product managers and marketing managers 2. Collaborate with economists, data scientists, and applied scientists across Decision Science 3. Present results of analyses to cross-functional teams and leadership 4. Build trust in science models and forecast outputs with product teams Innovation & Strategic Thinking 1. Think creatively about ways that leading-edge analytics and emerging data sources can address Devices' most pressing business challenges 2. Help internal teams leverage analytic tools to better manage innovation 3. Conduct empirical studies and perform quantitative and qualitative research 4. Identify opportunities to improve forecasting accuracy and business impact Cross-Functional Partnership 1. Work closely with product managers and marketing managers to understand portfolio evolution and business strategy 2. Support DSO leadership in quarterly business reviews and strategic planning A day in the life Your days will be split between refining and building models and working with business leaders to interpret them. You own science-based forecasts that can directly impact Amazon's bottom line on the order of multi-million dollar decisions. - You will perform model refreshes or updates to analyses as needed; and, - You will be expected to develop new techniques to process large data sets, address quantitative problems, and contribute to design of automated systems. About the team The Decision Science team within DSO (Device Supply Organization) is responsible for forecasting and demand planning initiatives across Amazon Devices. The DSO team of 300+ engineers, scientists, and PMs applies quantitative methods and data-driven approaches to replace judgment-based decisions with science-driven forecasts. Decision Science focuses on lifetime demand forecasting using econometric and machine learning models for rapid reforecasting, mix adjustments, and portfolio management for new product launches. We also inform to go/no-go investment decision for new product initiatives
Applied Scientist II, Amazon Supply Chain
US, WA, Seattle
As part of the AWS Applied AI Solutions organization, we have a vision to provide business applications, leveraging Amazon's unique experience and expertise, that are used by millions of companies worldwide to manage day-to-day operations. We will accomplish this by accelerating our customers' businesses through delivery of intuitive and differentiated technology solutions that solve enduring business challenges. We blend vision with curiosity and Amazon's real-world experience to build opinionated, turnkey solutions. Where customers prefer to buy over build, we become their trusted partner with solutions that are no-brainers to buy and easy to use. We are looking for an Applied Scientist to join our team that is building enterprise applications leveraging machine learning, generative AI, and agentic AI to help millions of companies worldwide manage their day-to-day supply chain operations. Our mission is to accelerate our customers' businesses through intuitive, differentiated technology solutions that solve enduring supply chain challenges. We blend strategic vision with curiosity and Amazon's real-world operational experience to build opinionated, turnkey solutions that make the 'buy versus build' decision a no-brainer for our customers. As an Applied Scientist, you will design and develop machine learning models and algorithms that power intelligent supply chain applications at global scale. You will work at the intersection of research and real-world product impact, translating scientific advances into production systems that serve millions of customers. We operate like a startup within AWS, offering you the opportunity to tackle complex challenges while working with the latest technologies in deep learning, large language models, and optimization. If you are passionate about pushing the boundaries of applied science, thrive in ambiguous problem spaces, and want to shape the future of supply chain intelligence while having the backing of AWS's extensive resources, we want to hear from you. Key job responsibilities - Design, develop, and deploy machine learning models for demand forecasting, inventory optimization, anomaly detection, and supply chain decision-making. - Develop generative AI and agentic AI solutions that automate complex supply chain workflows and deliver intelligent, adaptive recommendations to customers. - Formulate real-world business problems as machine learning problems; define data requirements, model architectures, evaluation metrics, and experimentation frameworks. - Drive end-to-end applied science projects from ideation through experimentation, offline evaluation, A/B testing, and production deployment at scale. - Collaborate with engineering, product management, and business stakeholders to translate scientific capabilities into customer-facing product features, and mentor other scientists to raise the team's technical bar. A day in the life You will start many mornings reviewing experiment results and model metrics before joining a science sync where you and your teammates discuss progress, debug tricky modeling issues, and brainstorm new approaches. From there, you may spend focused time writing and testing model code in Python or PyTorch, running offline evaluations, or preparing an A/B test for a new forecasting algorithm. Expect regular working sessions with software engineers to integrate your models into production services, and occasional deep-dive reviews where you present your scientific approach and findings to the broader team. About the team The AWS Applied AI Solutions team builds enterprise applications that leverage Amazon's operational expertise to solve real-world supply chain challenges for millions of companies. We operate like a startup within AWS, moving fast and shipping iteratively with modern AI technologies. We invest in your growth through mentorship from experienced scientists, conference publication support, and internal science reading groups. If your career hasn't followed a traditional path, we encourage you to apply — we value varied experiences and perspectives.
Manager, Applied Science- Manipulation & Autonomy , Fauna
US, NY, New York
We are seeking a Lead Applied Scientist to drive the development of next-generation manipulation and autonomy systems for robots operating in complex, real-world environments. This role is designed for an exceptional technical leader with a strong research background and a passion for translating cutting-edge ideas into working robotic systems. You will play a central role in defining the technical direction of our manipulation and autonomy stack, from problem formulation and algorithm design to system integration and real-world deployment. While this role is hands-on and deeply technical, it is also expected to evolve toward technical leadership and team building over time. Key job responsibilities - Lead research and development of manipulation and autonomy systems for robots, including planning, control, learning, and closed-loop execution - Design and implement algorithms, especially focused around autonomy and interaction with dynamic environments - Work closely with perception, motor control, hardware, and systems teams to build tightly integrated autonomy pipelines - Define evaluation methodologies, benchmarks, and simulation-to-real workflows for manipulation and autonomy - Stay deeply engaged with the research community, selectively incorporating state-of-the-art techniques into deployed systems - Mentor and guide other researchers and engineers, help set technical direction, and contribute to team growth and research culture - Lead technical projects from conception through production deployment - Bridge research initiatives with practical engineering implementation 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.
Applied Scientist, AWS Applied AI Solutions - Life Sciences
US, WA, Seattle
As part of the AWS Applied AI Solutions organization, we have a vision to provide end user applications, leveraging Amazon's unique experience and expertise, that are used by millions of companies worldwide to manage day-to-day operations. We will accomplish this by accelerating our customers' businesses through delivery of intuitive and differentiated technology solutions that solve enduring business challenges. We blend vision with curiosity and Amazon's real-world experience to build opinionated, turnkey solutions. Where customers prefer to buy over build, we become their trusted partner with solutions that are easy to adopt and easy to use. The Team Join the next science revolution at AWS Life Sciences Applied AI Solutions, where you'll work alongside world-class scientists to build AI that transforms how therapeutics are discovered, developed, and brought to patients. We're out to revolutionize how medicines are discovered, developed, and brought to patients, powered by a new generation of AI. Our team tackles some of the hardest open problems at the intersection of frontier AI and life sciences. We apply biological foundation models, large language models, and agentic reasoning systems to life sciences problems, then put them into the hands of customers as applications and managed services they can fine-tune, tailor, and deploy on their own data. The science challenges are deep: how do you design agentic systems that reason correctly over complex biological, regulatory, and clinical logic? How do you enable customers to tailor foundation models to their proprietary data and get better outputs with less effort? How do you adapt models to reason faithfully in high-stakes scientific and regulatory domains? Today we're focused on two areas. In clinical trials, we're building AI that automates and optimizes regulatory and clinical development workflows. In drug design, our products (including Amazon Bio Discovery) accelerate discovery by giving bench scientists AI-guided protein engineering and antibody design capabilities. We combine frontier research with production-scale delivery to put breakthrough science into the hands of customers solving humanity's hardest problems. We value scientific rigor, encourage publication, and support conference participation. If you want to do research that ships, this is the team. The Role We are seeking an Applied Scientist to build the models and methods behind our life sciences AI products, with a primary focus on clinical trial operations and agentic reasoning. You will design, train, and evaluate systems that reason over complex clinical and operational logic, and ship them into products customers use directly. You will work closely with senior and principal scientists on well-scoped research problems, own your results end to end, and see your work reach production. This role combines expertise in LLM reasoning and agentic AI with applied impact in life sciences. You will work on how large language models reason, plan, and act in complex scientific domains, while applying domain knowledge to ensure models produce scientifically valid outputs. The problems span multiple fronts: - How do you build LLM-based agentic systems that correctly reason over clinical protocols, regulatory standards, and complex multi-step operational workflows? - How do you evaluate agent reliability and faithfulness rigorously enough to trust in high-stakes clinical settings? - How do you develop model customization methods (fine-tuning, retrieval augmentation, domain adaptation) that let customers get strong results from foundation models on their own data? You will focus on clinical trial operations (agentic automation, structured reasoning, evaluation, domain adaptation), with opportunities to contribute across drug discovery (protein engineering, antibody design) as the portfolio grows. You will own end-to-end scientific solutions from research through production, and your work will directly shape the tools that scientists use daily. Key job responsibilities - Design, train, fine-tune, and evaluate LLM-based agentic systems that reason over clinical protocols, regulatory standards, and operational workflows - Build rigorous evaluation harnesses and benchmarks to measure agent reliability, faithfulness, and failure modes in high-stakes domains - Develop model customization methods (fine-tuning, RLHF, retrieval augmentation, domain adaptation) that help customers get better outputs on their own data with less effort - Contribute to graph-based and causal modeling approaches for clinical trial operations - Partner with Life Sciences domain experts, product, and engineering to translate scientific challenges into shipped capabilities - Own experiments end to end: problem framing, implementation, evaluation, iteration, and hand-off to production - Publish at top-tier venues where the work supports it - Contribute to drug discovery efforts (protein engineering, antibody design) as opportunities arise A day in the life - Design and run an experiment to validate a new agentic reasoning or fine-tuning method, then ship it as a capability customers can use - Diagnose why a model is failing on a new class of inputs and implement a fix to unblock a delivery milestone - Build or extend an evaluation benchmark to measure how faithfully an agent reasons over clinical logic - Meet with domain experts to scope what the next model release needs to do - Review results with a senior scientist, sharpen the approach, and get it over the finish line - Prototype a new idea that could become the next capability in the product About the team AWS Solutions As part of the AWS solutions organization, we have a vision to provide business applications, leveraging Amazon's unique experience and expertise, that are used by millions of companies worldwide to manage day-to-day operations. We will accomplish this by accelerating our customers' businesses through delivery of intuitive and differentiated technology solutions that solve enduring business challenges. we blend vision with curiosity and Amazon's real-world experience to build opinionated, turnkey solutions. Where customers prefer to buy over build, we become their trusted partner with solutions that are no-brainers to buy and easy to use. Diverse Experiences AWS values diverse experiences. Even if you do not meet all of the preferred qualifications and skills listed in the job description, we encourage candidates to apply. If your career is just starting, hasn’t followed a traditional path, or includes alternative experiences, don’t let it stop you from applying. Why AWS? Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. We pioneered cloud computing and never stopped innovating — that’s why customers from the most successful startups to Global 500 companies trust our robust suite of products and services to power their businesses. Inclusive Team Culture AWS values curiosity and connection. Our employee-led and company-sponsored affinity groups promote inclusion and empower our people to take pride in what makes us unique. Our inclusion events foster stronger, more collaborative teams. Our continual innovation is fueled by the bold ideas, fresh perspectives, and passionate voices our teams bring to everything we do. Mentorship & 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, mentorship and other career-advancing resources here to help you develop into a better-rounded professional. 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 we strive for flexibility as part of our working culture. When we feel supported in the workplace and at home, there’s nothing we can’t achieve.
Senior Applied Scientist, Center for Quantum Computing: Device Team
US, CA, Pasadena
As a Senior Quantum Applied Scientist on our Device team, you will be a technical authority and driving force in the design and measurements of novel superconducting qubits. You will lead detailed simulation and measurement efforts to explain experimental results, inform new qubit designs, and optimize device performance, working collaboratively with our design, fabrication, processor, and exploratory research teams. This is a role with significant room for innovation: you will play a key role in finding paths towards more performant devices. We are looking for a seasoned researcher with deep expertise in superconducting circuit physics plus a proven track record of bridging design, simulation, and measurement. Success in this role requires both technical depth and a genuine passion for applied, collaborative work. The ideal candidate will excel at communication across disciplines — translating detailed analyses into actionable guidance for engineering teams — and will bring the experience and judgment to identify innovations that will have the greatest impact. Key job responsibilities • Develop simulations to predict device performance, then design and measure devices that leverage the understood scalings. • Reduce the gap between simulated predictions and measurements by building more accurate models. • Communicate scientific findings across the CQC, and, when appropriate, share results externally via conference presentations and publications in scientific journals • Identify and evaluate emerging research developments that could impact design decisions About the team The Amazon Center for Quantum Computing (CQC) is a multi-disciplinary team of scientists, engineers, and technicians, on a mission to develop a fault-tolerant quantum computer.
2027 Quantum Applied Science Internship, Quantum Technologies team
US, CA, Pasadena
The Amazon Web Services (AWS) Center for Quantum Computing (CQC) is a multi-disciplinary team of theoretical and experimental physicists, materials scientists, and hardware and software engineers on a mission to develop a fault-tolerant quantum computer. Throughout your internship journey, you'll have access to unparalleled resources, including state-of-the-art computing infrastructure, cutting-edge research papers, and mentorship from industry luminaries. This immersive experience will not only sharpen your technical skills but also cultivate your ability to think critically, communicate effectively, and thrive in a fast-paced, innovative environment where bold ideas are celebrated. Join us at the forefront of applied science, where your contributions will shape the future of Quantum Computing and propel humanity forward. Seize this extraordinary opportunity to learn, grow, and leave an indelible mark on the world of technology. Amazon has positions available for Quantum Research Science and Applied Science Internships in San Francisco, CA; Santa Clara, CA; Pasadena, CA; and Boston, MA. We are particularly interested in candidates with expertise in any of the following areas: superconducting qubits, cavity/circuit QED, quantum optics, open quantum systems, superconductivity, electromagnetic simulations of superconducting circuits, microwave engineering, benchmarking, quantum error correction, fabrication, etc. Key job responsibilities In this role, you will work alongside global experts to develop and implement novel, scalable solutions that advance the state-of-the-art in the areas of quantum computing. You will tackle challenging, groundbreaking research problems, work with leading edge technology, focus on highly targeted customer use-cases, and launch products that solve problems for Amazon customers. The ideal candidate should possess the ability to work collaboratively with diverse groups and cross-functional teams to solve complex problems and to communicate research findings clearly. A successful candidate will be a self-starter, comfortable with ambiguity, with strong attention to detail and the ability to thrive in a fast-paced, ever-changing environment. Leverage AI-powered tools where applicable to accelerate research, experimentation, and prototyping. Critically review and validate outputs from AI tools and automated systems. About the team Diverse Experiences AWS values diverse experiences. Even if you do not meet all of the qualifications and skills listed in the job description, we encourage candidates to apply. If your career is just starting, hasn’t followed a traditional path, or includes alternative experiences, don’t let it stop you from applying. Why AWS? Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. We pioneered cloud computing and never stopped innovating — that’s why customers from the most successful startups to Global 500 companies trust our robust suite of products and services to power their businesses. Inclusive Team Culture Here at AWS, it’s in our nature to learn and be curious. Our employee-led affinity groups foster a culture of inclusion that empower us to be proud of our differences. Ongoing events and learning experiences, including our Conversations on Race and Ethnicity (CORE) and AmazeCon (gender diversity) conferences, inspire us to never stop embracing our uniqueness. Mentorship & 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, mentorship and other career-advancing resources here to help you develop into a better-rounded professional. 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 we strive for flexibility as part of our working culture. When we feel supported in the workplace and at home, there’s nothing we can’t achieve in the cloud.
See more jobs
View from space of a connected network around planet Earth representing the Internet of Things.
Get more from Amazon Science
Subscribe to our newsletter

Amazon.com | Conditions of Use | Privacy | © 1996-2026 Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates

Social