Assistant​/Associate Professor - Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Position Summary

Job

Location:

Rolla

Full/Part Time:
Full-Time

This is an exceptional moment to launch an academic career here. The Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering is the largest department on campus, and each of its degree programs is the largest and highest-ranked among public institutions in Missouri. The department has nearly tripled its research expenditures over the last four years and has a long-established record of research excellence, with five junior faculty having received CAREER and DoD Young Investigator awards in the last ten years.

Several Ph.D. students have received prestigious fellowships from NASA, NSF, and DoD, and the department is also home to the Missouri Space Grant Consortium, a NASA-funded, statewide program supporting space-related research, fellowships, and outreach.

Housed in a state-of-the-art 145,000-square-foot facility, the department includes 28 internationally recognized tenured/tenure-track faculty, 9 teaching faculty, 10 staff members, over 140 graduate students (including 80 Ph.D. students), over 1,400 undergraduate students, and over 12,000 living alumni. We are equally proud of our many award-winning teachers and deeply value excellence in the classroom. We are looking for colleagues who are as energized by mentoring and teaching students in the classroom and laboratory as they are by advancing the frontiers of their research field, and who will help us continue to prepare engineers who are as strong in fundamentals and hands‑on practice as they are in emerging computational and AI‑enabled tools.

The Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T) in Rolla, Missouri invites outstanding applicants for tenure-track faculty positions at the assistant or associate professor rank in mechanical engineering
. We welcome candidates across a broad range of research areas that complement and expand the department's strengths in mechanical engineering. Areas of particular interest include, but are not limited to,
autonomous and intelligent systems, physical AI, thermal and energy sciences, and dynamics and controls
. Relevant topics may include embodied and physical AI, robotics and robot learning, human-robot and human-machine collaboration, autonomous ground, aerial, and space systems, thermal management, energy conversion and storage, sustainable energy systems, and nonlinear, optimal, and learning‑based control of cyber‑physical systems. Excellent candidates in other fields relevant to mechanical engineering are also encouraged to apply.

Applicants must provide evidence of, and potential for, excellence in (a)
establishing a strong, externally funded research program
, (b)
high-quality, innovative teaching at the undergraduate and graduate levels, and (c) service in the applicant's professional community and/or institution. Qualified candidates will possess a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering or a closely related field by the time of appointment. Successful applicants will also demonstrate alignment with one or more of Missouri S&T's multi‑disciplinary, multi‑investigator research centers and programs, including the Intelligent Systems Center, the Center for Research in Energy and the Environment, and the Kummer Center for Advanced Manufacturing - collaborative homes where new faculty quickly find co‑investigators, graduate students, and shared facilities.

Review of applications will begin as they are received and will continue until the positions are filled. For full consideration, please apply before October 15, 2026
.

Employment visa sponsorship may be…