Research Fellow/Associate - AI Software for Nature-Positive Business Transformation in ASEAN

About the role

Nanyang Technological University's Earth Observatory Singapore (EOS) is looking for a Research Associate or Research Fellow to research AI and AI-enabled software and tools that support nature-positive business transformation in ASEAN. The work contributes to a new venture supporting Southeast Asian businesses in their sustainability transition. The position suits an entrepreneurial researcher with a strong technical background and a long-term research vision at the intersection of AI and sustainability.

Key responsibilities

• Review recent developments in large language models, agents and world models for sustainability applications.
• Design and develop AI or AI-enabled software and tools for sustainability and nature-positive business contexts, using curated datasets on sustainability reporting in Southeast Asia.
• Implement, test and benchmark tool performance using open-source frameworks and tools.
• Collaborate with sustainability researchers, data scientists and industry partners to ensure model relevance and usability.
• Develop user-facing prototypes or APIs showing practical applications in reporting, analysis or decision support.
• Contribute to academic publications, open-source releases and capacity-building activities.

Required profile

• MSc or PhD in Computer Science, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence or a related field.
• Proven experience in large or small language model development or AI-enabled software development.
• Experience or demonstrated interest in applied NLP in contexts such as finance, ESG, corporate sustainability or environmental data.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with attention to reproducibility and open-source best practices.

Required skills

• Strong programming in Python, with familiarity with PyTorch, TensorFlow or Hugging Face Transformers.
• Data engineering experience (preprocessing, annotation, pipelines).