Assistant or Associate Professor in observational and/or experimental astrophysics

Position Summary

The Department of Physics and Astronomy at UNC Chapel Hill seeks a tenure-track faculty member to design and carry out cutting-edge research programs that make use of our unique observational facilities. This will be the first of several hires aimed at building strength in our astronomy program. UNC Chapel Hill is the founding member of the SOAR project and has 61 nights guaranteed annually on the highly subscribed telescope atop Cerro Pachon, Chile. SOAR is equipped with high-speed queue-based spectroscopic capabilities and resides within 2 km of the Rubin Observatory. UNC is also the lead institution for the Argus Array extremely-wide-field 5m-class time-domain-survey telescope, the SkyNet rapid-response array located on four continents, and the Evryscope all-sky survey; our labs built SOAR’s Goodman high-throughput spectrograph.

We are seeking leading candidates to be hired at either the Assistant- or Associate-professor level, in all areas of observational astrophysics and/or telescope instrumentation. We are specifically interested in candidates who leverage SOAR’s capabilities, in possible combination with other internal and external facilities. In addition, we are seeking candidates whose approach to teaching and mentoring will promote student success in a public university serving a diverse constituency that includes a large proportion of first-generation university students.

Successful candidates will have the opportunity to work in collaboration with our groups in general observational astronomy; exoplanets and stars; experimental astrophysics; computational astrophysics and gravity; high-energy and cosmology theory; and neutrino and nuclear astrophysics. Our instrumentation labs are designed for large and small telescope instrumentation projects, with holographic-spectrograph-grating manufacturing capabilities and an extensive machine shop with full-time machinists. UNC Chapel Hill has significant high-performance computing resources, including the 17,000-core Longleaf cluster optimized for I/O intensive workloads with dedicated GPU and large-memory partitions. The Research Triangle area is a dynamic collaborative environment with UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke University, and North Carolina State University all located within close proximity.

Educational Requirements

PhD in astrophysics, astronomy, or related field

Qualifications and Experience

Postdoctoral experience in observational/instrumental astrophysics

Equal Opportunity Employer

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, color, disability, gender, gender expression, gender identity, genetic information, national origin, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, or status as a protected veteran.

Application materials

Applicants must provide a full CV, cover letter, research statement, teaching/mentoring statement and the contact information for three references who can write a letter of recommendation on their behalf. We will request the letters from the references if and when needed. Candidates selected for the short list will be asked to provide the contact information for a fourth reference who can also provide a recommendation letter. Application review will begin on February 21 and will continue until the position is filled.