Human-Centered AI Intern, Computational Social Science - Los Altos, CA

At Toyota Research Institute (TRI), we're on a mission to improve the quality of human life. We're developing new tools and capabilities to amplify the human experience. To lead this transformative shift in mobility, we've built a world-class team advancing the state of the art i ...

Job description

At Toyota Research Institute (TRI), we're on a mission to improve the quality of human life. We're developing new tools and capabilities to amplify the human experience. To lead this transformative shift in mobility, we've built a world-class team advancing the state of the art in AI, robotics, driving, and material sciences.
This is a Summer 2026 paid 12-week internship opportunity. Please note that this internship will be a hybrid in-office role.
Please note that this internship will be a hybrid in-office role. We welcome applicants from fields such as computational social sciences, computer sciences, social sciences, psychology, organizational behavior, sociology, behavioral economics, human factors, or related disciplines, provided they have strong methodological training and interest in collective wellbeing.

The Team
This internship opportunity falls within the Harmonious Communities Department in the Human-Centered AI Division (HCAI). Our research aims to understand, simulate, and shape wellbeing in complex, real-world systems, including workplaces, communities, and organizations. In addition to examining individual behavior, we study how wellbeing emerges, is distributed, and changes over time across groups, and how organizational structures, technologies, and policies can support collective outcomes now and into the future.
We are an integrated team of behavioral scientists, machine-learning researchers, and human-computer interaction experts. Our research leverages use cases to push state-of-the-art in disciplinary thinking.
The Internship
We are looking for a Computational Social Science (or similar) intern to help create and advance tools that support data-driven exploration of possible futures. The project will involve conceptual work, quantitative analysis, and system design with an emphasis on multilevel thinking. It will involve exploration of questions such as the following:
What are new ways of extracting insight from data using contemporary AI systems? How do we extract plausible, possible and impossible futures from data?  How do we communicate future scenarios in ways that inspire curiosity, deeper thinking, and action?
The strongest candidates will be generalists, flexible problem solvers, and ideally have experience in at least two of these areas: data science or machine learning, HCI, information visualization, and software engineering. This internship is well-suited for candidates who are excited to build prototype solutions and take on high-risk, high-reward challenges outside of the academic research setting. Bonus points for experience in Future-of-Work research.
Over the course of the project, in addition to Harmonious Communities group meetings, you will also participate in all Human-Centered AI Division meetings, and broader TRI events. You will be exposed to how interdisciplinary industrial research works and learn from our team and the other interns in our division. Furthermore, you will engage in strategy discussions about how your internship research project connects to business impact at Toyota.

Responsibilities

• Scope a research project to align with our Harmonious Communities Computational Social Science efforts.
• Examine how to link multi-order systems impact of present changes.
• Be the primary driver of the technical plan (e.g., study design, analysis plan) with regular feedback from your mentor and teammates.
• Implement and complete the project using TRI resources.
• Present the project's approach and findings in research meetings to the Harmonious Communities Department, the HCAI Division, and TRI, as well as to partners from Toyota business groups.
• Our goal is that you end the summer with work that informs internal strategy and may be publishable in an academic journal or conference.

Qualifications

• Enrolled in a PhD degree program.
• Track record of implementing research projects from start to finish.
• Experience handling messy, large-scale observed data for both analytical modeling and systems engineering purposes.
• Ability to reason across multiple levels of analysis and translate research insights into implications for organizational decision-making.
• Interest in theory development or integrative modeling.
• Comfort working with imperfect, real-world data and balancing rigor with practical constraints.
• Desire to work on challenging, open-ended research projects.
• Desire to be part of a highly interdisciplinary team, and an understanding of how this will improve your work.
• Demonstrated ability to work autonomously while soliciting feedbackInterested in the topic space of wellbeing, organizational behavior, and behavior change.

Please add a link to Google Scholar and include a full list of publications and presentations when submitting your CV to this position.
The pay range for this position at commencement of employment is expected to be between $45 and $65/hour for California-based roles, and between $40 and $58/hour for Massachusetts-based roles. Base pay offered will depend on multiple individualized factors, including, but not limited to, business or organizational needs, market location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. TRI offers a generous benefits package including medical, dental, and vision insurance, and paid time off benefits (including holiday pay and sick time). Additional details regarding these benefit plans will be provided if an employee receives an offer of employment.
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