Faculty Member - Tenure-Track (Engineering Product Development)

The Engineering Product Development (EPD) Pillar at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) invites applications for a full-time, tenure-track faculty position at the rank of Assistant Professor in the area of Human-Centric Embodied AI, Physical Intelligence, and World Models.

As generative AI moves from digital environments into the physical world, EPD seeks an exceptional scholar who can define the next generation of human-aware, hardware-grounded AI systems. We are particularly interested in candidates whose research develops predictive models that enable robots, intelligent products, and embodied agents to understand human intent, anticipate motion, reason about 3D environments, and act safely in real time. The successful candidate will build a rigorous and externally funded research programme that connects deep generative modelling, physical reasoning, human motion understanding, robot learning, and design-led engineering.

Strategic Context

EPD is a multidisciplinary pillar focused on designing and building intelligent, technology-intensive products that work in the real world. The pillar brings together strengths in robotics, electronics, design science, systems and control, materials, healthcare engineering, manufacturing, and AI-enabled product development. This search is intended to strengthen EPD’s emerging capability in physical AI: systems that can sense, model, decide, and act in human-centred environments while respecting physical, safety, and design constraints.

Research Areas of Interest

We welcome applicants working at the intersection of human-centric AI, embodied perception, generative world models, and robot control. Areas of particular interest include, but are not limited to, 3D digital humans and expressive body models; egocentric or first-person embodied perception; synthetic data generation for embodied AI; human motion and intent prediction; action-conditioned video or latent world models; physics-compliant motion generation; whole-body control; hierarchical planning for robots in human environments; safe robot learning; and the translation of generative models into reliable physical systems.

Candidate Profile

Strong applicants will demonstrate a clear research vision and a publication record in leading venues in robotics, computer vision, machine learning, graphics, human motion modelling, or related fields. The search is motivated by the calibre and direction of emerging scholars whose work spans egocentric synthetic data for embodied perception, predictive world models for realistic human motion, text-conditioned and physics-compliant motion synthesis, real-world whole-body control, and safe planning for robots operating in human-centric environments. We are seeking candidates who can turn these advances into a coherent research agenda that is technically deep, externally visible, and well aligned with SUTD’s design-centric mission.

Responsibilities

The successful candidate is expected to establish an internationally recognised research group; secure competitive external research funding; publish in high-impact venues; teach undergraduate and graduate courses in areas such as robotics, AI, machine learning, design of intelligent products, sensing and control, or embodied systems; supervise undergraduate, Master’s, and PhD students; contribute to project-based and design-led education; and collaborate across EPD, other SUTD pillars, industry, and public-sector partners.

Qualifications