Empire Innovation Professor

Department Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering

The Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering (CBE) at the University at Buffalo (UB) invites candidates to apply for a position at the Associate Professor or Full Professor level to be known as Professor of Empire Innovation. Selected candidates will receive support through the SUNY Empire Innovation Program (EIP) which recognizes high caliber faculty with proven track records of externally funded research.

We invite applications from prominent leaders in the broad fields of AI and Biotechnology. Priority will be given to research areas such as AI-directed initiatives related to small molecule natural products; biologics; cell therapies; manufacturing across food, biotech, and biopharmaceutical products; and the interfacing of biotechnology and non-health-related fields (i.e., the biological production of organic or inorganic materials).

The successful candidate should have a record of scholarly accomplishments, a sustained externally funded research program (with the potential to obtain grants from a wide variety of public and private sources and collaborate and/or establish projects with industry), and teaching experience.

The successful candidate will be expected to

• Maintain an active research program
• Teach courses at the graduate and undergraduate levels
• Advise students at all levels
• Collaborate with scientists, engineers and clinicians in a multidisciplinary research environment spanning all Schools of the University as well as the Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Data Science, the National AI Institute for Exceptional Education, the Department of AI and Society, the New York State Center for Excellence in Bioinformatics & Life Sciences, and Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center.

The newly launched Innovation Hub provides opportunities and resources to commercialize technology and launch new companies. In addition, UB was recently chosen as the site of the Empire AI consortium, which will include a state-of-the-art artificial intelligence computing center (to complement the current Center for Computational Research), to be funded by New York State with $400 million in public and private investment.

The University at Buffalo (UB), a member of the prestigious American Association of Universities, is the largest, most comprehensive, and a flagship university in the State University of New York (SUNY) system. UB is tied for No. 36 among 225 public universities in the 2026 U.S. News Best Colleges rankings and comes in  in best national universities, which includes major public and private colleges and universities nationwide.

The School of Engineering and Applied Sciences’ (SEAS) undergraduate engineering program ranked 33rd among public universities and 57th nationally. UB enrolls approximately 22,000 undergraduates, 10,000 graduate students, and employs 1,600 full-time faculty.

More details about the UB CBE department can be found here:
www.cbe.buffalo.edu

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