Assistant​/Associate Professor - Decision Intelligence Specialist

Classification Minimum Requirements

Candidates for this rank shall hold the highest degree appropriate to their field. A candidate shall be expected to demonstrate successful experience pertinent to the position they are being recommended and have demonstrated qualities relevant to the goals of the academic unit in which they will be employed.

Ast/Aso Prof

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This is a 9-month tenure-accruing position that will be 70% research (Florida Agricultural Experiment Station) and 30% extension (Florida Cooperative Extension Service), available at the Gulf Coast Research and Education Center (GCREC), Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, at the University of Florida. This assignment may change in accordance with the needs of the unit. Tenure will accrue in the Department of Agriculture and Biological Engineering.

The faculty member will actively seek contract and grant funding to support their program. The faculty member will engage in Extension activities in their program area.

This position is part of a cohort of new hires for the GCREC Agricultural AI Institute that will focus on the advancement of applied artificial intelligence (AI) in agriculture with an emphasis on automation and efficiency within specialty crop production.

This position advances the Institute's research mission by developing and applying next-generation decision intelligence methodologies that transform agricultural data into actionable management recommendations. The successful candidate will establish an internationally recognized research program focused on prescriptive AI for agriculture, integrating reinforcement learning, causal inference, optimization, and agentic AI systems to enable autonomous and human-centered decision making.

Primary responsibilities include conducting innovative research in decision-focused AI for agriculture; developing reinforcement learning frameworks for adaptive farm management; advancing causal inference methods to improve decision making from observational and experimental data; designing agentic AI systems capable of planning, reasoning, and coordinating agricultural operations; creating prescriptive decision support systems for farm resource allocation, including things such as labor, equipment, water, fertilizer, and crop protection inputs.

The specialist will play a key role in technology transfer, translating advances in decision intelligence into practical tools and workflows with potential for adoption by producers, industry, and other stakeholders. The successful candidate will collaborate with multidisciplinary teams to develop user-centered decision support systems.

The decision intelligence specialist will contribute to extension activities by training extension specialists and industry representatives on the use of decision support technologies and the integration of those technologies into current production systems.

Candidates with strong academic backgrounds that also demonstrate the ability to work with applied systems will be preferred. The candidate will have the opportunity to work in an interdisciplinary environment consisting of industry partners and faculty in agricultural and biological engineering, economics, entomology, horticulture, microbiology, plant pathology, plant breeding, and weed science.

Candidates should possess the interest, skills, and temperament to interact and collaborate effectively with other researchers. The GCREC Agricultural AI Institute emphasizes team approaches to problem solving. A successful candidate is expected to embrace all three missions of Research, Extension, and Teaching of the Land-grant university system.

The candidate is required to establish a strong, externally funded, research program, and promote his/her research activity and leadership in professional societies as well as sustained publication activity in top scientific journals. The candidate is encouraged to collaborate with other faculty and research partners, creating synergy both inside and outside of the University of Florida.

The successful candidate will participate actively in undergraduate and graduate education by chairing and serving on graduate committees, supervising thesis, dissertation and undergraduate research, and publishing research results with students. Faculty are encouraged to participate in professional development activities related to teaching and advising and may teach courses and seminars.

Because of the IFAS land-grant mission, all faculty are expected to be supportive of and engaged in all three mission areas-Research, Teaching and Extension- regardless of the assignment split specified in the position description.

The University of…