Research Intern

Cantina Labs is growing its research lab in Singapore and is looking for exceptional research interns to join us for a three-month onsite internship starting in October 2026 or January 2027. You will own a well-defined research or engineering problem in video generation, matched to your background and interests, working closely with a senior mentor from initial problem formulation through experimentation, evaluation, and potential submission to a leading AI conference.

What you'll work on

• Research and develop distillation methods for large-scale diffusion and flow-based video generation models, including guidance and adversarial distillation
• Explore techniques that reduce inference cost while preserving or improving generation quality
• Develop reward models and preference-based optimization methods to improve aesthetics, motion quality, temporal consistency, and prompt adherence
• Study how base-model behavior affects post-training outcomes and use experimental findings to inform model development
• Design rigorous evaluations and conduct large-scale experiments on generative video models
• Contribute to evaluation harnesses, model integrations, research tooling, or other product-adjacent projects related to your core work
• Document and communicate your findings through research reports, internal presentations, demonstrations, and potential conference submissions

What you bring

• Currently pursuing a PhD or a final-year master's student in computer science, machine learning, computer vision, or a related field
• Research experience in generative modeling, computer vision, multimodal learning, or video generation
• Hands-on experience with diffusion models, flow-based models, model distillation, reinforcement learning, preference optimization, or related post-training techniques
• Ability to formulate hypotheses, design controlled experiments, analyze results, and communicate conclusions clearly
• Proficiency in Python and hands-on experience with PyTorch, JAX, or another modern machine learning framework
• Comfort working independently on an open-ended research problem while collaborating closely with a mentor and the broader team

Nice to have

• Experience with video, image, audio, or other multimodal data
• Publications at leading venues such as NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, or AAAI

What we offer

• A defined project and named senior mentor before your first day
• Weekly one-on-one meetings and clear project milestones
• A meaningful compute allocation for your research
• Ownership of a complete research or engineering result
• First-author positioning by default where your contribution supports a publication
• Timely internal review of research intended for submission
• Support for conference travel if your paper is accepted
• Opportunities to demonstrate your work and receive credit for product contributions
• A competitive monthly stipend
• Visa and travel support for eligible international candidates
• Housing support for qualifying international interns in Singapore
• Equipment and resources needed to complete your work

About Cantina Labs

Cantina Labs is a social AI company developing advanced video generation models that bring characters to life and transform how people tell stories, connect, and create. The internship runs for three months onsite in Singapore, with start dates in October 2026 or January 2027.