Open Rank, Tenured/Tenure-Track Faculty Position in AI-Enabled Experiments for Scientific Discovery

Posting Details

Position Details

Title
Open Rank, Tenured/Tenure-Track Faculty Position in AI-Enabled Experiments for Scientific Discovery in Health

Appointment Status
Tenure

Department
IU Bloomington Vice Provost For Faculty Affairs

Location
Bloomington

Position Summary

Indiana University Bloomington invites applications for a tenure-track assistant professor or tenured associate or full professor in the Department of Statistics, College of Arts and Sciences. We seek an outstanding researcher to develop a research program at the forefront of statistics, artificial intelligence, experimentation, and health.

AI systems now participate not only in analyzing data but in designing experiments, selecting interventions, and guiding scientific discovery. This shift calls for new statistical foundations, and this opening offers a well-resourced professorship to build a research program that develops these foundations.

We are especially interested in candidates developing statistical methodology for AI-enabled experimentation in health, aging, and related areas. Relevant settings include:

• autonomous and AI-guided experimentation
• adaptive and innovative clinical trials
• precision medicine
• self-driving laboratories
• digital twins and in-silico experimentation
• AI-enabled drug discovery.

Regulatory frameworks are evolving alongside these developments, including recent FDA guidance on credible, validated applications of AI, model-informed approaches and new experimental methodologies in drug development. Exceptional candidates in other application areas will also be considered.

We welcome candidates whose research develops methodology and theory in a variety of subfields of statistics relevant to AI-enabled experimentation, including:

• experimental design, clinical trial design, and sequential experimentation
• Bayesian optimization and active learning
• contextual bandits, reinforcement learning and online experimentation
• causal inference and treatment-effect heterogeneity
• statistical learning and machine learning
• evaluation and monitoring of AI systems
• micro-randomized trials
• uncertainty quantification
• prediction-powered inference.

Indiana University Bloomington offers an unusually rich environment for this research. IU has established major academic-industry partnerships in health and biotechnology, including a five-year $40M partnership with Eli Lilly on AI-enabled clinical trials research, and a five-year master collaboration agreement with Cook Medical. These partnerships are coordinated through the IU Launch Accelerator for Biosciences and complement IU’s clinical and health-science ecosystem, including the IU Medical Center and IU School of Medicine, giving faculty the opportunity to work across the full span from statistical theory and methodology to applied industry collaborations and translation into practice. Located approximately one hour from Indianapolis, Bloomington provides access to one of the nation’s major health and life-sciences hubs.

The successful candidate will join a collegial, research-active department with strengths in Bayesian methods, high-dimensional statistics, computational statistics, physics-informed inference, and biostatistics, and will help shape its direction in AI-enabled and health-oriented statistics. The department is closely tied to the Indiana Statistical Consulting Center, which serves researchers across the university, and has natural collaborators in the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, home to the Luddy Center for Artificial Intelligence and its focus on AI for digital health, as well as in the Department of Mathematics, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, the Cognitive Science program, and the School of Public Health-Bloomington.

These 10‐month appointments would ideally start August 1, 2027, although an earlier or later start date is negotiable. Applications received by December 1, 2026, will receive full consideration, and applications will be accepted until the positions are filled.

Responsibilities: Tenured/tenure-track faculty at Indiana University Bloomington are expected to substantially contribute to the overall academic excellence of their department by developing and/or maintaining a robust research portfolio including pursuing and obtaining major extramural research funding to conduct cutting-edge research both as a corresponding principal investigator and a collaborating investigator; teaching and mentoring undergraduate and/or graduate students as designated by the department chairperson; and actively providing service within the department, school and university alongside active engagement with the profession and/or the community.

The position is located on the campus of Indiana University, Bloomington ( IUB ) in Bloomington, Indiana, and successful candidates are expected to work on the IUB campus to allow full engagement with the department, school, campus, and community. Indiana University bases its tenure and promotion recommendations upon performance in three areas including research, teaching, and service. All individuals hired through this initiative are expected to excel in research and provide strong performance in teaching and service.

Minimum Qualifications: Applicants should possess a PhD in statistics (or a related field) and be committed to excellence in scholarship and teaching at the undergraduate and graduate level.

Candidates for w/tenure positions must demonstrate a record of scholarly achievement appropriate for an appointment w/tenure, including extramurally funded research as a corresponding principal investigator, current funding or strong potential to secure external funding, established record of publications and scholarly work, and experience leading sizeable research initiatives.

Application Procedures: Review of applications will begin December 1, 2026 and continue until all positions are filled. Application materials should include:

• Cover letter (maximum of 3 pages in length, identifying your application for a position with tenure (associate professor) or a tenure-track position (assistant professor), and summarize your interest in the position.