Assistant Curator​/Assistant Professor, Invertebrate Zoology

Please see Special Instructions for more details.

Application materials should include:

• Research statement, including past achievements and future plans (maximum three pages)
• Museum service statement, describing your vision for service to collections, exhibitions, teaching, and public engagement (maximum three pages)
• Names and contact information for three people who could provide letters of reference
• PDFs of three to five publications that best represent your work

Department Invertebrate Zoology - 011

The Division of Invertebrate Zoology at the American Museum of Natural History ( AMNH ) seeks an outstanding tenure-track Assistant Curator/Assistant Professor with expertise in the evolution of Lepidoptera, to start on or after July 1, 2027.

We seek an innovative evolutionary biologist who will develop a world-leading, collections-based research program in Lepidoptera. The successful candidate will integrate modern approaches in evolutionary biology with genomics, imaging, computational biology, biodiversity informatics, and/or other emerging computational approaches. We are particularly interested in scientists who envision natural-history collections not simply as repositories of specimens, but as powerful research platforms for addressing fundamental questions about evolution, biodiversity, and environmental change.

The ideal candidate will have a record of high-impact scholarship, strong potential for extramural funding, and the vision to establish an internationally recognized independent research program. Research interests may include, but are not limited to, systematics, morphology, comparative genomics, biogeography, and/or macroevolution. We are especially interested in candidates who combine organismal biology with emerging computational approaches, including machine learning, computer vision, automated specimen identification, large-scale image analysis, and other data-intensive methods for understanding biodiversity.

Excellent knowledge of moth and butterfly diversity is essential.

The successful candidate will conduct original scientific research on Lepidoptera; steward and develop the Museum’s Lepidoptera collection; and expand the collection through fieldwork, strategic collecting, and other accessions.

AMNH’s Lepidoptera collection comprises more than 3 million specimens, with particular strengths in New World macrolepidopterans. The collection is well organized and largely housed in compactors, including a spacious new butterfly facility. Together, these holdings provide an exceptional foundation for research across evolutionary timescales and geographic regions. We envision the successful candidate playing a leadership role in advancing the next generation of collections-based research through integration of physical specimens with genomic, morphological, ecological, geographic, imaging, and other digital datasets.

Opportunities include developing methods to extract new information from historical specimens; applying machine learning and advanced analytical methods to specimen images and biodiversity data; integrating museum specimens with genomic and environmental datasets; and developing computational approaches that accelerate species discovery, identification, classification, and our understanding of evolutionary change.

In addition, the successful candidate will serve as an Assistant Professor in the Richard Gilder Graduate School and should have an interest in teaching and advising PhD students and postdocs in comparative biology through this program. There is also the opportunity to build on existing relationships with nearby partner institutions to advise doctoral…