Engineering with Artificial Intelligence Assistant/Associate Professor - All Fields

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The mission of the Walter Scott, Jr. College of Engineering is to educate, innovate, cultivate, and engage, in order to generate knowledge, improve quality of life, and positively impact society. The College has internationally recognized research programs and offers a world-class education steeped in hands-on experiential learning in a community that is committed to fostering inclusion and equity. This complementary balance of education and research, combined with a culture that encourages and rewards collaboration, positions the College well for innovating.

WSCOE has attracted many faculty, staff, and students whose interests and ambitions align with the values of stewardship and societal impact. The College’s research excellence, combined with the collaborative environment, give WSCOE an exceptional position for innovating and addressing complex societal problems. The culture within WSCOE strongly encourages and rewards externally-funded research and interdisciplinary collaboration. WSCOE faculty and staff are entrepreneurial, growing and supporting large programs in their areas of expertise, as well as frequently partnering across the University and in technology transfer. This ability to connect and cooperate has led to remarkable and sustained success in attracting federal grant support and industrial research, with per-capita research expenditures that exceed those of most peer institutions and that represent a disproportionately large fraction of CSU’s total funded research activity.

WSCOE is a medium-sized engineering college of approximately 155 faculty, 320 postdoctoral scholars and research scientists, 110 academic and administrative staff, 2,550 undergraduate students, and 650 graduate students. Four of its academic departments serve both graduate and undergraduate students, and two have graduate-only programs. The College also houses two interdisciplinary degree-granting programs in biomedical engineering and materials science and engineering, as well as a competitively-selected federal cooperative atmospheric research institute.

Colorado State University

CSU is recognized as one of the premier research institutions and routinely ranks in the top of all American Universities in research expenditures. The University was established in 1870 as the land-grant institution for the State of Colorado. The University is committed to equity and inclusive excellence, setting the standard for public research universities in education, research, and engagement for the benefit of the citizens of Colorado, the United States, and the world. Members of the University community acknowledge the responsibility to uphold our Principles of Community: inclusion, integrity, respect, service, and social justice. Student enrollment is approximately 34,000 and the University employs more than 7,200 staff, including academic faculty, administrative professionals, and classified staff. As a premier land-grant university, CSU is addressing and solving the greatest global challenges of our time.

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The Walter Scott, Jr. College of Engineering at Colorado State University announces a College-wide search for six new faculty members who use artificial intelligence (AI) as a key component of their research programs and who aspire to develop innovative AI educational programs. We welcome candidates who develop foundations of AI in an engineering context, generate data for their AI models, or otherwise apply AI to solve engineering challenges. Each new faculty member will have their academic home in one or two of the departments within the College.

We seek faculty members who apply AI to advance our areas of unique research expertise. These are elaborated below for each department and include prediction of climate and intense weather events using data from satellites and radars; novel approaches to synthetic biology and high-throughput biological synthesis; use of satellite data for water resource management; development of models and sensors for improving infrastructure resilience; unique high-power, ultra-short pulse laser systems for fusion and other applications; and cyber-physical systems. Significant assets of interest to candidates for this AI cluster hire include:

In addition to their engagement with world-leading experts in these fields, successful candidates who join the College via this cluster hire will become part of a community of researchers and educators with similar interests in AI applications. These new faculty members are expected to develop and implement innovative AI curricula to support the creation of AI-oriented programs and to enhance our broader educational mission. They will embrace the opportunity to work collaboratively with interdisciplinary teams. As a land-grant institution, CSU is committed to serving our communities, and successful candidates will collaborate with stakeholders to advance sustainable, equitable solutions that align with the university’s priorities.

CSU engineering faculty apply their skills to solving societal challenges in many fields, including but not limited to strategic areas where CSU is a world leader, including as atmospheric science, veterinary medicine, energy, sustainability, and cybersecurity. These strategic areas need thought leadership focused on how best to incorporate AI to provide transformative solutions. The interests of each of the departments participating in this cluster hire are:

Atmospheric Science: The Department of Atmospheric Science is a world leader in research on weather, climate, atmospheric chemistry, and remote sensing. AI is already transforming modeling and prediction of the Earth system, and research in our department is at the cutting edge of applying AI to key environmental challenges, including extreme weather, air quality, and climate change. The Department seeks a faculty member whose research focuses on designing, building, and using AI models as tools to address societally relevant challenges in characterizing, understanding and predicting the Earth system. Example areas include climate variability and change; atmospheric radiation and remote sensing; air quality; high-impact weather, and integration of physics-based and data-driven models. Graduate education is at the core of our mission, and this faculty member will mentor graduate students to become future leaders across academia, government, and the private sector.

Chemical and Biological Engineering: The Department invites applications for a faculty position from candidates who use AI in innovative applications within the CBE key areas of biological engineering, biomedical engineering, and materials design. Example areas of interest include applications of AI in protein engineering and genome engineering for synthetic biology applications, and AI applications that seek to advance theory and modeling of fundamental biological and chemical processes. CBE offers a highly interdisciplinary and collaborative environment, with all research faculty holding courtesy appointments in other departments or cross-departmental programs. More than 50% of current graduate students also come from other departments or programs. Collaborations within the department offer access to unique data sets, equipment and capabilities, including from protein X-ray diffraction, high-throughput biological synthesis in the Biofoundry, automated single-cell and single-molecule imaging, biosensors, microfluidic fabrication and meta-omics.

Civil and Environmental Engineering: The Department seeks applicants with a focus on innovative advancements and use-inspired applications of AI to address challenges at the intersection of infrastructure and environmental sustainability, climate resilience, and community health. We seek candidates who can leverage AI to improve existing social, ecological, and technological infrastructure systems while developing solutions for future needs. The Department features world-renowned research and innovation centers that support use-inspired transdisciplinary research and education, including the One Water Solutions Institute, Water Technology Acceleration Platform, Hydraulics Laboratory, and the Center for Risk-Based Community Resilience Planning. The Department has long-term research agreements with federal, state, and industry partners to develop and disseminate field-based and remotely sensed data and next generation modeling tools for sustainable management of water and natural resources, sustainable agricultural systems, climate-resilient natural and built systems, and community resilience. This position offers the opportunity to engage with rich and emerging data resources, build on CSU’s strengths in civil and environmental engineering, and contribute to innovative research that addresses real-world issues, including those related to climate change, community health, infrastructure resilience and equitability, and environmental justice.

Electrical and Computer Engineering: The Department seeks applicants with a research focus on foundations and/or applications of AI for addressing fundamental challenges within the broad discipline of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Example areas of interest include foundations and applications of AI for radars, satellites, remote sensing, and climate science; high-power lasers and photonics; biomedical imaging and image processing; networking, cyber-physical systems, and embedded/IoT systems; high-performance computing; control, signal processing, and robotics. The Department has world-renowned programs and facilities in weather radar, remote sensing, and high-power lasers, and has been a leader in two NSF engineering research centers in these areas. It houses state-of-the-art CSU-CHILL and CSU Sea-Pol weather radar facilities and the ALEPH high-power laser center, generating large volumes of data that can be used to facilitate applications of AI in remote sensing and high-power lasers. The Department is also the lead institution of LaserNetUS and will soon break ground on a $150M laser center in collaboration with Marvel Fusion. The Department has strong AI-related research programs in developing next-generation computing, networking, cyber-physical systems, and embedded/IoT systems for engineering efficient, sustainable, and ethical solutions. These efforts are further supported by strong research groups on the foundations and applications of AI in control, signal processing, biomedical imaging, and robotics. Many ECE faculty members hold courtesy appointments in the departments including Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, and Statistics, and collaborate with faculty in these and other departments.

Mechanical Engineering: The Department is seeking candidates who leverage AI-based methods to tackle complex mechanical engineering challenges. The Department conducts leading research in energy, aerospace, health, bioengineering, and materials. Our energy-related research has received global recognition for its interdisciplinary and groundbreaking work on engine technology, renewable energy, air quality, and advanced propulsion, all aimed at fostering a sustainable future. These efforts generate extensive datasets and complex system models that offer AI researchers rich opportunities to develop innovative solutions for energy efficiency, optimization, and sustainability. We welcome candidates who will enhance our strengths and spearhead new research directions. Example areas of interest include AI-driven approaches to model and simulate complex dynamic systems; AI-enhanced methods to advance the design and optimization of mechanical systems; AI-based techniques to enable intelligent systems; and other emerging fields within AI for mechanical engineering.

Systems Engineering: AI is needed for all major aspects of SE practice, including test and measurement, verification and validation, analytics, simulation, digital twins, and model-based SE. Systems Engineering is the largest doctoral program at CSU, with both a large on-campus presence and with mid-career students hailing from many large corporations and research labs. This gives the SE Department unique abilities to produce large amounts of AI-salient input data focused on human factors, AR/VR, cybersecurity, sensing, and imaging, while also being able to work with huge datasets produced by the corporations and research labs in which its off-campus graduate students thrive. The Department is particularly strong in creating vehicular security and energy ecosystem data, while its partners provide large data sets in areas from large animal gait data to satellite imaging data. The Department seeks applicants whose research interests are in the application of AI to all SE challenges.

Proposed start date is August 15, 2025.

During the application process, candidates should indicate one or two departments that are their primary interest. Even if two departments are selected, only one application is required to be considered by both.

Complete applications will include these items:

To apply, please visit: https://jobs.colostate.edu/postings/152843
For full consideration, please apply by 11:59 PM on January 5, 2025.

CSU is committed to full inclusion of qualified individuals. If you are needing assistance or accommodations with the search process, please reach out to the listed search contact.
References will not be contacted without prior notification to candidates. Please note, applicants may redact information from their application materials that identifies their age, date of birth, or dates of attendance at or graduation from an educational institution.