Assistant Research Scientist (PREP0004166) Full-time

Assistant Research Scientist

This position is part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Professional Research Experience Program (PREP). NIST recognizes that its research staff may want to collaborate with researchers at academic institutions on specific projects of mutual interest and, therefore, requires those institutions to be recipients of a PREP award. The PREP program involves staff from a wide range of backgrounds conducting scientific research across various fields. Individuals in this position will perform technical work supporting the collaboration's scientific research.

Research Title: Developing an Evaluation Framework for Digital Watermarking Technologies

The work will entail:

• Conduct a literature survey on state-of-the-art watermarking techniques (image, video, audio, and document-based).
• Familiarize with existing watermarking tools and open-source implementations.
• Understand NIST's role and ongoing efforts in digital content protection and cryptographic standards.
• Propose evaluation metrics, transformation pipelines (stress-testing such as compression, cropping, rotation, noise, etc.), and potential testbeds for watermark robustness testing.
• Draft a preliminary evaluation plan or roadmap that could guide future benchmarking activities.

Deliverables:

• Annotated bibliography of key watermarking research.
• Summary report of explored tools and their features.
• Draft evaluation framework document (with proposed metrics and methodology).
• Prototype implementation or scripts for transformation and detection scenarios.

Qualifications:

• Background in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or related field.
• Education level: Postgraduate individual (above bachelor's degree):
• At least Master student. May be pursuing or finished with masters, or PhD.
• Strong interest in digital media security, cryptography, or multimedia processing.
• Experience with Python, MATLAB, or image/audio processing tools is preferred.
• Familiarity with scientific reading and technical writing.
• Strong oral and written communication skills.

Application Instructions:

Please upload the following with your application:

• CV/Resume
• Self portraits