"Tenure-track Assistant Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering: Resilient Agriculture and Forest Systems, Fall 2026"

Job Details

The Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE) Department at UTK is seeking exceptional candidates to fill one tenure-track position at the Assistant Professor level starting August 1, 2026. This search is part of a cluster hire to add faculty across multiple departments with expertise in resilience in agricultural and forest systems (RAFS). The successful candidate may have a joint appointment with the School of Natural Resources. The RAFS cluster is part of the “It takes a Volunteer” cluster hiring initiative at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The RAFS Cluster will support the resilience of AFS under environmental and economic constraints through research and education collaborations across disciplines and sectors.

This new hire will work on complex modeling and digitalization of agricultural/forest product supply systems with a focus on prediction and optimization of production-market-environment interactions. Examples of applications include modeling and optimization of AFS operations under uncertainty, design, development, and optimization of AFS supply chains (including closed loops), and byproduct value maximization.

UTK is the flagship campus of the UT system, land-grant university, and a public Carnegie Research 1 institution. The Tickle College of Engineering (TCE) currently has 203 tenure/tenure track and 79 non-tenure track faculty in its nine academic departments and offers 11 undergraduate, 16 MS, and 15 PhD/DE degree programs. The ISE Department offers BS, MS, and Ph.D. degrees in Industrial Engineering and MS and Doctor of Engineering degrees in Engineering Management.

Qualifications

An earned doctorate in Industrial Engineering, Systems Engineering, Operations Research, Agriculture Engineering, Environmental Engineering, or a closely related field is required, and the PhD must be in hand by the time of appointment. The successful applicants will have strong problem-solving and communication skills and the ability to work in an interdisciplinary environment. A strong commitment to teaching excellence and publications in leading journals are expected. Preferred qualifications are teaching experience, industrial experience, and demonstrated ability to attract external funding.

Candidates with the following expertise and experience are preferred:

• Developing and implementing predictive models to forecast crop and forest system needs and generating dynamic prescription maps for variable-rate technology equipment.
• Integrating specialized models from different domains to create holistic decision-support systems that enable comprehensive trade-off analysis for land and resource managers.
• Applying advanced operations research techniques, such as multi-objective optimization, stochastic programming, and simulation, to integrated decision support systems and digital twins.
• Creating user-centric visualization tools, interfaces, and dashboards within an integrated decision support system to make business analysis more accessible.

Application Instructions

Review of applications will begin on October 1, 2025, and will continue until the position is filled. Applications should include a cover letter, curriculum vitae, research statement, teaching and mentoring statement, and names of three to five references. For additional questions, please contact Dr. Xueping Li at xli27@utk.edu.