AI/ML Engineer-Part Time

AI/ML Engineer-Dayton, OH

About AsterTech. AsterTech LLC is a Dayton-based research and technology company developing advanced materials, intelligent laboratory systems, and scalable processes for water treatment, critical-mineral recovery, sustainable manufacturing, and related industrial applications. Our team combines engineering, materials science, data analytics, artificial intelligence, and software development to solve applied research and commercialization challenges.

Position Summary. AsterTech is seeking an AI/ML Engineering Intern to help develop data-driven tools for scientific research, laboratory automation, process monitoring, and engineering decision support. The intern will work with engineers and scientists to prepare datasets, develop and evaluate machine-learning models, build prototype software components, and communicate technical results.

This is a hands-on engineering position. The intern will contribute to a defined AI/ML project with measurable objectives, documented datasets, performance metrics, and a working prototype or analytical deliverable. The position is designed to provide experience comparable to entry-level AI/ML engineering work while contributing to active technology-development projects.

This internship is intended for participation in the Ohio College Technology Internship Program, subject to employer and candidate eligibility and final program approval.

Key Responsibilities

• Work with scientists and engineers to translate a research or operational problem into a clearly defined AI/ML task.
• Collect, organize, clean, label, and validate structured or unstructured datasets from experiments, sensors, equipment logs, images, documents, or other approved sources.
• Perform exploratory data analysis to identify trends, anomalies, missing values, class imbalance, and data-quality limitations.
• Develop baseline models and compare appropriate machine-learning approaches using Python and standard AI/ML libraries.
• Train, validate, test, and document models using suitable performance metrics and reproducible workflows.
• Support projects involving time-series forecasting, anomaly detection, computer vision, predictive modeling, natural-language processing, or retrieval-augmented generation, depending on project needs.
• Develop data-processing scripts, application programming interfaces, dashboards, or lightweight user interfaces that allow technical users to interact with model outputs.
• Use Git or a similar version-control system to manage source code, experiments, documentation, and changes.
• Help evaluate model reliability, explainability, bias, privacy, security, and suitability for the intended use.
• Prepare technical documentation describing data sources, assumptions, model architecture, evaluation results, limitations, and recommended next steps.
• Present progress and final results to AsterTech’s technical and business teams.

Potential Internship Projects

Working with an assigned mentor, the intern may complete one defined project such as:

• Developing an anomaly-detection model for laboratory equipment or process-sensor data
• Building a predictive model for material or process performance using experimental datasets
• Creating a computer-vision prototype for monitoring experiments, identifying process states, or extracting measurements from images or video
• Developing an AI-assisted laboratory protocol or technical-document search tool using approved documents and retrieval-augmented generation
• Building a dashboard that combines experimental data, model predictions, uncertainty indicators, and engineering performance metrics
• Comparing machine-learning methods for forecasting, classification, regression, or optimization of an engineering process

The intern will deliver organized code, model-evaluation results, technical documentation, and a final demonstration or presentation.

Required Qualifications

• Currently pursuing an associate, bachelor’s, or graduate degree in computer science, data science, artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer engineering, electrical engineering, applied mathematics, statistics, or a related technical field.
• Working knowledge of Python and experience with common data-analysis libraries such as NumPy, pandas, matplotlib, or scikit-learn.
• Basic understanding of supervised and unsupervised learning, training and test datasets, overfitting, feature engineering, and model-evaluation metrics.
• Experience writing, testing, and debugging code through coursework, personal projects, research, or previous employment.
• Ability to analyze technical problems, communicate findings clearly, and maintain organized documentation.
• Ability to work both independently and collaboratively with a multidisciplinary team.
• Ability to work legally in the United States and satisfy all applicable Ohio College Technology Internship Program requirements.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with PyTorch, TensorFlow, Keras, XGBoost, Hugging Face, or similar AI/ML frameworks.
• Familiarity with SQL, relational databases, REST APIs, GitHub, Docker, Linux, or cloud-computing environments.
• Exposure to time-series analysis, signal processing, computer vision, natural-language processing, large language models, or retrieval-augmented generation.
• Experience developing dashboards or applications using tools such as Streamlit, Dash, Flask, FastAPI, React, Power BI, or similar technologies.
• Familiarity with experiment tracking, model versioning, automated testing, or basic MLOps practices.
• Interest in applying AI/ML to scientific research, manufacturing, laboratory automation, water technologies, advanced materials, or engineering systems.

Learning and Professional Development

The intern will receive:

• Direct mentoring from experienced technical staff
• Experience applying AI/ML methods to real scientific or engineering problems
• Exposure to the complete prototype lifecycle, including problem definition, data preparation, modeling, evaluation, integration, documentation, and demonstration
• Opportunities to strengthen software engineering, data analysis, technical writing, presentation, teamwork, and project-planning skills
• Experience communicating model performance and limitations to both technical and nontechnical stakeholders
• Exposure to research commercialization and the operation of a technology-focused small business

Expected Internship Deliverables

By the end of the internship, the selected candidate is expected to produce:

• A documented and quality-checked dataset or data-processing workflow
• Reproducible source code stored in an approved version-controlled repository
• Baseline and improved model results using clearly defined evaluation metrics
• A working analytical prototype, model demonstration, dashboard, or application component
• A concise technical report describing methods, findings, limitations, and recommended next steps
• A final presentation and demonstration for the project team