Research Intern

The International Water Management Institute (IWMI), a CGIAR Research Center, is seeking a highly motivated and skilled intern with a background in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Data Science to support the development of an AI-powered chatbot. This chatbot will serve as a knowledge-sharing tool to disseminate structured research insights on Circular Bioeconomy (CBE) business models to diverse stakeholder groups including policymakers, innovators, industry professionals, and development partners.

Scope of internship

The intern will contribute to the prototyping and development of a chatbot interface powered by large language models (LLMs) to provide users with intuitive, role-based access to CBE business models and knowledge products. The intern will gain hands-on experience in applying AI to real-world sustainability challenges, collaborate with international researchers, contribute to cutting-edge knowledge dissemination tools, and gain exposure to circular economy frameworks and global waste reuse strategies.

The intern will assist in the following areas:

• Collaborate with the team to support the design of conversational flows based on user personas.
• Define technical architecture integrating LLMs with structured document sources and contribute to the integration setup between LLMs and open-source databases in a cloud environment.
• Identify tools and open-source frameworks suitable for Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems.
• Support research teams in structuring and indexing CBE content into formats usable by AI models.
• Support the development and testing of a prototype chatbot using appropriate (open-source) LLMs, with a focus on scalability and integration.
• Explore integration opportunities with existing or upcoming decision support tools and websites to enhance functionality.
• Assist in assessing the feasibility of multilingual support and open-source deployment strategies.
• Support the team with reporting tasks, including summarizing architecture design, tool selection, benchmarking results, alongside other recommendations.

Requirements

• Final-year undergraduate or recent graduate in AI, Data Science, Computer Science, or related ICT fields.
• Demonstrated experience with natural language processing (NLP) and chatbot development.
• Familiarity with tools for knowledge retrieval, semantic search, and vector indexing.
• Strong organizational and communication skills.
• Ability to work independently and collaboratively with interdisciplinary teams.

Benefits

IWMI will provide a monthly stipend to the selected candidate during the internship period.

The research intern will be based at IWMI office in New Delhi, India. The duration of the internship is 06 months with the possibility of extension for another 6 months based on requirements of IWMI, and availability of funds as well as performance. This is a nationally recruited internship, and only Indian citizens are eligible to apply.

To apply, visit Applications must be submitted by 24:00 (India time) on September 01, 2025 (Monday).

The International Water Management Institute (IWMI) is an international, research-for-development organization that works with governments, civil society and the private sector to solve water problems in developing countries and scale up solutions. Through partnership, IWMI combines research on the sustainable use of water and land resources, knowledge services and products with capacity strengthening, dialogue and policy analysis to support implementation of water management solutions for agriculture, ecosystems, climate change and inclusive economic growth. Headquartered in Colombo, Sri Lanka, IWMI is a CGIAR Research Center with offices in 15 countries and a global network of scientists operating in more than 55 countries.

IWMI believes that diversity powers our innovation, contributes to our excellence, and is critical for our mission. We offer a multi-cultural, multi-color, multi-generational and multi-disciplinary working environment. We are consciously creating an inclusive organization that reflects our global character and our commitment to gender equity. We, therefore, encourage applicants from all cultures, races, ethnicities, religions, sexes, national or regional origins, ages, disability status, sexual orientations, and gender identities.