Summer Research Intern 2027 - Edge communications processing with AI accelerators

IBM Research is advancing artificial intelligence through innovations in accelerator architectures, software, and hardware-software co-design. Join a world-class team of researchers developing technologies that bring efficient intelligence to cloud, edge, and emerging computing platforms. IBM Research is seeking a Summer Intern to contribute to the development of advanced AI-driven solutions for performant communication and computing systems at the edge. The successful candidate will explore, develop, and optimize AI workloads on custom accelerator architectures, with a focus on efficient inference, kernel development, and performance analysis. The work of this research internship sits at the intersection of AI systems, signal processing, and computer architecture. The successful candidate will investigate how emerging AI models and algorithms can be efficiently mapped onto specialized computing platforms for applications in wireless communications, edge intelligence, and next-generation computing systems. Example application areas include wireless signal processing, 5G/6G communications, integrated sensing and communications (ISAC), and AI-enhanced network intelligence. The intern will work closely with researchers developing novel accelerator technologies and software ecosystems, contributing both creative research ideas and hands-on implementation. Success in this role requires curiosity, strong analytical skills, and the ability to translate complex algorithms into highly efficient implementations. Responsibilities: Develop and optimize AI kernels and inference workloads for custom accelerator architectures. Evaluate and benchmark performance, efficiency, and scalability across representative workloads. Explore mappings of signal-processing and communication algorithms onto specialized computing platforms. Prototype and implement algorithms using low-level programming techniques and hardware-aware software optimization. Collaborate with researchers across AI systems, computer architecture, and communications domains. Contribute to the identification of new opportunities for AI acceleration in performant communication and computing applications operating at the edge. Strong programming skills and experience with low-level software development and performance optimization. Strong foundations in mathematics, algorithms, and numerical methods. Experience with AI inference, machine learning systems, signal processing, or related computational workloads. Familiarity with digital systems, computer architecture, accelerator architectures, DSP architectures, or FPGA-based implementations. Demonstrated ability to independently develop, prototype, and evaluate complex technical solut Experience implementing and optimizing algorithms on custom computing platforms, accelerators, FPGAs, DSPs, or related systems. Familiarity with AI accelerator architectures, domain-specific architectures, or hardware/software co-design methodologies. Experience with kernel development, performance analysis, profiling, and benchmarking. Knowledge of machine learning models and inference frameworks. Background in wireless communications, communication systems, computer vision, sensor processing, or related domains. Demonstrated research experience through publications, open-source contributions, or significant technical projects.