Office of the Provost

From Genomics to Harvest: The Basic Science, Cultivation, and Production of Plants and Food

  • Basic and Applied Pollination Research

    Goal: In accordance with its dedication to the study of basic and applied pollination, UC Riverside is pursuing a cluster hire to examine various aspects of pollinator and pollination biology. 35% percent of the world’s food and ~87% of flowering plants require pollinators for their reproduction, and bees provide the vast majority of these ecosystem services. Maintaining agricultural productivity and natural plant communities will require enhanced knowledge of the pollination interactions in these systems, and solutions to health and management problems facing pollinators. This cluster hire currently seeks collaborative biologists examining issues related to (1) bee health, (2) pollinator and plant interaction networks and (3) evolutionary ecology of pollination mutualisms from the plant perspective, and will search for a resource economist in the next year.

    2015–16

    Positions hired:

    3


    2016–17
    Positions available: We do not anticipate additional hires in this cluster at this time.

  • Citrus

    Goal: UCR has a strong tradition of research on citrus and this cluster is essential to maintain and grow this strength for the future. The proposed cluster will include several new positions in CNAS and in CHASS and SPP, which are needed to strengthen and enhance UCR’s preeminence in this area. New faculty in economics and public policy will facilitate regional and national proposals that assess the economic and community impact of scientific advances in genetics, horticulture, entomology, and plant pathology. A particular focus of the CHASS and SPP positions will be on the economics and sociological analysis of community responses to technological changes, including issues such as biotechnology, agricultural labor, biosecurity, and water resource use. The cluster hires will work in teams to enable UCR to address the scientific, economic and social issues facing the citrus industry now, and which are likely to increase in importance in the future.

    2015–16
    Positions hired: 1

    2016–17
    Positions available: This cluster is inactive during this academic year.

    2017–18
    Positions available: 1
    Assistant Professor

  • Food, Guts, Bugs, Brains, and Behavior

    Goal: UCR has considerable strength in gut and brain research and an emerging strength in microbiology and host-pathogen interactions. This cluster of four new positions will build on that strength and expand it into one of the fastest-growing areas of biomedical research – the microbiome with an emphasis on the gut-brain axis. Two new faculty in Gut Microbiology will focus on the impact of gut bacteria on gut-nervous system interactions, including behavior. Potential home departments will be in CNAS, SOM or BCOE. Two new faculty in Molecular & Integrative Physiology will focus on the effect of diet on metabolism, brain function and behavior, including the impact on the enteric nervous system, and the microbiota, with a special emphasis on signaling between the gut, brain and peripheral tissues. Potential home departments will be in CNAS, SOM, or CHASS. The cluster hires will work in teams with existing faculty to position UCR to address the issue of how food and gut microbiota can affect our health, disease, and behavior.

    2015–16
    Positions hired: This cluster was inactive during this academic year.


    2016–17
    Positions available: 1

  • Insect Vectored Diseases & Mosquito Ecology

    Goal: UCR seeks to hire four highly motivated and talented faculty to synergize existing strengths in fundamental and applied aspects of disease vector research. This cluster focuses on insect-vectored diseases and mosquito ecology with four positions to be filled at the Assistant or Associate Professor rank over the next two years. We seek collaborative scientists examining issues related to (1) human pathogen-insect vector interactions (Assistant rank), (2) mosquito ecology/evolution (Assistant rank), (3) infection and immunity in a mammalian system against vector-borne diseases (Assistant or Associate rank) and (4) bioinformatics and computational biology of human vector-borne diseases and their insect hosts (Assistant rank). Potential home departments will be in the College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences or the School of Medicine. The Center for Disease Vector Research and the School of Medicine at UCR include faculty utilizing interdisciplinary approaches to study vectors and their associated pathogens, and to ameliorate suffering from diseases caused by insect-vectored pathogens. 

     

    2015–16
    Positions hired:
    This cluster was inactive during this academic year.

    2016–17
    Positions available: 2

  • Translational Plant Sciences

    Goal: The College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences and the Bourns College of Engineering seek five junior and senior faculty to build on existing strengths in plant biology and engineering to foster the translation of basic research to applications in agriculture and biotechnology, with the goal of enhancing global food and fuel security, benefiting human health, and training the scientific workforce of the 21st century. Ideal candidates will be experts in plant science, biochemistry, chemical engineering, bioengineering, or other field of translational science. Targeted areas include agricultural genomics, synthetic biology, systems biology, biological engineering, sensor technology, and bioprocessing. These new faculty will participate in educational initiatives that prepare students for careers in the biotechnology sector.

    2015–16
    Positions hired: 2


    2016–17
    Positions available: This cluster is inactive during this academic year.

Next Generation Technologies: New Materials, Phenomena and Devices

  • Autonomous and Intelligent Embedded Systems

    Goal: Improvements in the fields of sensing, electronics, embedded computing, communication and actuation have approached a point where it is now possible to envision embedded systems that are powerful enough and small enough to endow both miniature devices and larger-scale systems with almost human-like intelligence and autonomous behavior capabilities. To truly endow machines with autonomy, they must be able to develop and maintain detailed and meaningful models of their own state and of the environment around them. This requires great leaps in the state of the art of perception and reasoning algorithms; modeling and understanding the dynamics of large-scale systems, with potentially millions of relevant parameters; as well as powerful embedded platforms suitable for real-time solutions. This cluster plans to leverage upon existing expertise and facilitate the development of larger-scale research synergies to enable this vision. Areas of primary interest include: robotics, autonomy, and computer vision; planning, decision-making, and machine learning; and embedded, networked, and real-time systems.

    2015–16

    Positions hired: 3

     


    2016–17
    Positions available: We do not anticipate additional hires in this cluster at this time.

  • Coherent Optical Control of Materials

    2015–16
    Positions hired: This cluster was inactive during this academic year.

    2016–17
    Positions available: 3

    2017-18
    Positions Available: 1
    Assistant Professor
    Associate/Full Professor

  • Computational Materials

    Goal: UCR has significant cross-disciplinary experimental research activities within the areas of 2D materials and magnetic materials with applications in electronics, magnetics, opto-electronics, phononics, thermoelectrics, and energy. Our goal is to support that effort with a cluster hire in the areas of computational materials and theoretical condensed matter physics. The broadly classified sub areas of interest are: (1) computation applied to understanding growth-structure-property relations in materials science including high-throughput materials modeling; (2) application and development of methods to calculate electronic excited-state behavior and properties of materials; and (3) application and development of methods to predict properties of strongly correlated materials using traditional tools of condensed matter theory or more quantitative tools such as dynamical mean field theory or quantum Monte Carlo.

    2015–16
    Positions hired: 2


    2016–17
    Positions available: This cluster is inactive during this academic year.

    2017–18
    Positions available: 1
    Assistant Professor
    Associate/Full Professor

  • Phonon/Magnon Engineered Materials and Devices

    2015–16
    Positions hired: 3

    2016–17
    Positions available: We do not anticipate additional hires in this cluster at this time.

    2017–18
    Positions available: 1
    Assistant Professor
    Associate/Full Professor

Mind and Body: Advances in the Study of Human Health and Well-Being

  • Genome Stability and Human Health

    Goal: The University of California Riverside seeks one senior and three junior hires in Genome Stability and Human Health to build upon its strengths in genomics, bioinformatics, epigenetics, structural biology, bioanalytical chemistry, and mammalian neuroscience. The significance and role of genome instability in cancer, aging, and the correct functioning of the nervous and immune systems is a vibrant and expanding area of investigation that will lead to translational outcomes from basic research thereby benefiting human health and society in the 21st century. The four appointees in the Genome Stability and Human Health cluster will participate in the research and educational mission of the university and advance its biomedical and life science portfolio.

    2015–16
    Positions hired: 1


    2016–17
    Positions available: This cluster is inactive during this academic year.

  • Human Neuroimaging

    Goal: UCR has recently made a major commitment to establish a Human Brain Imaging Center, in order to establish UCR as a leader in research on human neuroscience and imaging technologies. This Center will serve as a campus wide resource for conducting innovative research in neuroscience, the social sciences, medicine, bioengineering, materials science, electrical engineering, education and the physical sciences. Important first steps have already been taken, including the purchase of a 3T MRI scanner to enable cutting edge research into structural and functional networks of the human brain, and completing a search for a Director. The cluster hires will focus on two general themes. The first theme concerns expertise in neuroimaging research focused on understanding the mechanisms in the human brain involved in social, developmental and cognitive neuroscience. The second theme concerns expertise in research focused on advancing human neuroimaging technology including MR Physics/Engineering and imaging data processing and analysis.

    2015–16
    Positions hired: 3

    2016–17
    Positions available: 2

  • An Integrated Approach to Improve Aging and Lifespan

    Goal: One of today’s greatest challenges is to effectively promote the successful aging of a growing and increasingly diverse population. To address this challenge, we aim to establish a comprehensive program to investigate the public policy, social, behavioral, environmental, and biological determinants of health and wellbeing as they relate to the needs of older adults. This search seeks faculty with demonstrated ability or potential for multidisciplinary, collaborative research programs that address health and wellbeing in aging. Together with existing UCR faculty, new hires will establish a team who investigate mechanisms underlying aging processes at the molecular, cellular, individual, and community level.

    2015–16
    Positions hired: 0

    2016–17
    Positions available: This cluster is inactive during this academic year.

  • Metabolomics

    2015–16
    Positions hired: This cluster was inactive during this academic year.

    2016–17
    Positions available: 0

  • Methodology Core for Community Translational Health

    Goal: Improving population health and addressing health inequalities requires creatively designed and rigorously evaluated approaches that diffuse health-beneficial knowledge, change health-relevant behaviors, and foster contextual conditions (work, housing, water systems) that allow healthy lives and produce healthy communities. The Community Translational Health cluster at UCR responds to this critical need by creating an interdisciplinary group of statisticians, health professionals and social scientists to collaboratively address what would otherwise be intractable health-related research problems. Successful applicants will join existing faculty to build teams that cut across departments and schools to tackle critical research problems in population health.

    2015–16
    Positions hired: 3

    2016–17
    Positions available: 2

  • Modeling of Complex Bio-Systems

    2015–16
    Positions hired: This cluster was inactive during this academic year.

    2016–17
    Positions available: 2

    2017–18
    Positions available: 1
    Assistant Professor
    Tenured Associate Professor

  • The Malleable Nervous System: From Molecule to Circuit to Behavior

    Goal: In a major Neuroscience initiative, we seek to hire tenure-track or tenured faculty members as part of a cross campus, multi-disciplinary effort to study the malleable nervous system (from development, to function, to developmental disabilities, to aging, degeneration and repair). We seek researchers that collectively span multi-disciplinary levels of investigation (molecular mechanisms, circuit analysis, complex behaviors, neurodevelopmental disorders) using the state-of-art techniques (molecular, optogenetics, behavioral, educational, computational, imaging, EEG, genetic and research of clinical populations) applied to experimental model systems of health, injury and disease (invertebrate, vertebrate or human systems). Our goal is to assemble a team of collaborative individuals with an outstanding record, committed to excellence in research, that complement existing campus strengths. Particular strengths on the campus pertinent to this recruitment include sensory processing, neurodevelopmental (autism spectrum disorder, fragile X) neurodegenerative disorders, glial-neuronal interactions, cognitive neurotherapeutics, functional imaging, assessment and interventions of clinical populations, child development, circuits, neurobiology and endocrinology of behavior.

    2015–16
    Positions hired: 6

    2016–17
    Positions available: 2

  • Pathophysiology and Systems Biology of Host-Microbe Interactions

    2015–16
    Positions hired: 1

    2016–17
    Positions available: This cluster is inactive during this academic year.

Renewable Nature: Environment, Energy, and Sustainable Development

  • BREATHE: Bridging Regional Ecology and Aerosolized Toxins to understand Health Effects

    Goal: This center aims to develop studies Bridging Regional Ecology and Aerosolized Toxins to understand Health Effects (BREATHE). This network of UCR researchers and community organizations is developing multidisciplinary research projects to study the health impacts of air quality changes, such as those resulting from chronic drought, climate change, and resulting ecological change. Health impacts of interest include pulmonary diseases such as asthma, and the systemic effects on neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative diseases. While our studies can model effects in many different regions, we also have a remarkable opportunity to use the Coachella Valley, including the rapidly changing Salton Sea ecosystem, as a living laboratory to follow the dynamic changes occurring in a complex ecology that includes agricultural, rural desert, and urban areas, as well as an ethnically and economically diverse community. Our work will have public policy implications including aspects of environmental justice.

    2015–16
    Positions hired: 1

    2016–17
    Positions available: 4

    2017-18
    Positions available: 1

  • Environmental Toxicology

    2015–16
    Positions hired: 2

    2016–17
    Positions available: This cluster is inactive during this academic year.

    2017–18
    Positions hired: 1
    Assistant Professor
    Associate/Full Professor

  • Multiphase Atmspheric Chemical Transformations

    2015–16
    Positions hired: 1

    2016–17
    Positions available: 2

Revitalizing Communities: Impact in Education and Social Policy

  • African American Disparities: Axes of Disempowerment

    2015–16
    Positions hired: 1

    2016–17
    Positions available: 4

  • Indigenous Studies

    Goal: CHASS has an extraordinarily robust tradition of research on and with Indigenous communities. The Indigenous Studies cluster will strengthen and enlarge the UCR’s significant reputation as a leader in this historically critical and increasingly important field. To continue this record of intellectually and creatively engaged research and practice, this cluster will recruit innovative and exciting scholars working in two broad fields: contemporary Indigenous arts and knowledges and global Indigenous medicine, health and the environment.

    2015–16
    Positions hired: 5

    2016–17
    Positions available: We do not anticipate additional hires in this cluster at this time.

  • Greater Mexico and U.S. Latinx Perspectives

    2015–16
    Positions hired: 0

    2016–17
    Positions available: 4

    2017–18
    Positions available: 1

  • Race, Immigration, and Integration: Empiracal and Applied Approaches

    Goal: For many years, UCR has shown considerable strength as a university that effectively serves students from diverse racial backgrounds. The university is also strong in faculty research on race and immigration in the humanities and arts. There is an emergent set of strengths in empirical/applied research on race and immigrant integration, with notable progress in grant activity, graduate and undergraduate training, and public outreach. This cluster aims to bolster this emerging strength in social science research related to “Race, Immigration, and Integration: Empirical and Applied Approaches.” The placement of each successful candidate may be in the Graduate School of Education, the School of Public Policy, the School of Medicine, or in the departments of Anthropology, Ethnic Studies, Political Science, or Sociology, depending on the preferences of the candidate and the host departments. Topical areas of focus in this cluster search include: 1) social movement and political power, 2) educational opportunities across the K-16 education pipeline with a focus on racialization, including its intersections with class, gender, sexuality, and immigration status, 3) Media and its relationship to social attitudes, civic engagement, and community formation; and 4) demography and public health.

    2015–16
    Positions hired: 5

    2016–17
    Positions available: We do not anticipate additional hires in this cluster at this time.

  • STEM Teaching and Learning

    Goal: This search seeks faculty with research programs addressing how students learn, targeting (pre)k-20, with focus on assessment and enhancement of STEM education in different settings and across diverse groups. Housed in Graduate School of Education, faculty are encouraged to collaborate with other academic units throughout the University. Example research areas of interest include (1) How people learn in STEM disciplines, (2) Relationships between instructional practices and learning among diverse groups of students, (3) Student interest, participation, and persistence in STEM fields, and (4) Technologies that promote learning and evaluation of “big data” these technologies can collect.

    2015–16
    Positions hired: 1

    2016–17
    Positions available: 4

New Voices and Visions: The Global Studio of the Creative and Performing Arts

  • Critical Dance Studies and Experimental Choreography

    Goal: As part of UCR’s cluster hiring initiative, the Dance Department has been allocated hires in both critical dance studies and choreography. This year’s hire will be in critical dance studies. The UCR Department of Dance offers a B.A. in Dance, an M.F.A. in Experimental Choreography, and a Ph.D. in Critical Dance Studies. These innovative programs influence the fields of Dance and Dance Studies internationally, and their coexistence in a single department has established a model for connecting the theorization of dance and the making of dances without blurring the lines between them. Poised at an exciting place of expansion and renewal, the Dance Department seeks to continue its record of leadership by cultivating interdisciplinary and discipline-specific approaches to the study of dance and by productively destabilizing the field of contemporary choreography.

    2015–16
    Positions hired: 1

    2016–17
    Positions available: 1

  • Global Arts

    Goal: The Global Arts cluster will further energize UCR’s already considerable reputation as a vibrant community of artists and scholars whose work is global in both the sense of its international reach and its cross-disciplinary scope. We will recruit individuals engaging with creative artistic practices and scholarship on the arts either on their own or in active partnership with artists, as a means of supporting intellectually productive globally engaged research. A performance maker, a border-crossing sound composer, a writer of Global Public memory and an aesthetician engaged in artistic practice will contribute to shaping sophisticated learning environments and advance knowledge.

    2015–16
    Positions hired: 0

    2016–17
    Positions available: 4

Innovation Incubator

  • Business Analytics Research

    2015–16
    Positions hired: 1

    2016–17
    Positions available: 2

    2017–18
    Positions available: 1

  • Center of Excellence in Cyber-Security at UCR

    Goal: The University of California, Riverside is committed to developing a cluster in cyber-security. This focused hiring is part of the strategic plan of the UCR campus, which has identified cyber-security as a strategic growth area. The goal is to establish a cyber-security Center of Excellence. The center will leverage the current faculty and existing multi-million dollar grants across multiple disciplines and departments from Engineering, and Sciences. The vision of the center is to usher a new generation of computing, mobile, and embedded systems where security and privacy are built into the design and implementation from the beginning. The cluster will be based on deep technical research but also explore its effect to and interaction with public policy, social sciences and medical applications.

    2015–16
    Positions hired: 2

    2016–17
    Positions available: 1

  • Design-Based Statistical Inference for Social Science and Policy Evaluation

    Goal: Our focus is on statistical methods to identify the causal effects of interventions on social, educational, health, political, and economic processes and outcomes, locally, nationally, or internationally. These methods might rely on planned randomized control trials in the field or on natural experiments that can assess the causal impact of interventions using observational data. Successful candidates might make theoretical and methodological contributions to causal inference, develop novel experimental designs (such as adaptive or non-adaptive designs for identifying causal mechanisms), or conduct Bayesian meta-analysis, program evaluation, applied econometrics, or political methodology. Successful candidates also will show an interest or demonstrated capacity to work across traditional disciplines and an ability or established record to attract extramural funds.

    2015–16
    Positions hired: 2

    2016–17
    Positions available: 2

  • Experimental Business Research

    Goal: The Experimental Business Research cluster seeks to leverage our growing global academic reputation in experimental-based business research to promote the use of experimental methods to study an array of business and policy issues spanning the entire business domain (including accounting, economics, finance, information systems, marketing, management, and operation and supply-chain management), expand experimental methodologies through research and teaching, and apply these methodologies to solve practical problems faced by firms, corporations, and governmental agencies.

    2015–16
    Positions hired: 0

    2016–17
    Positions available: 3

  • Spatial Research

    Goal: Our goal is to create a world-class consortium of spatial researchers who are advancing both spatial informatics and applications to grand challenges in science, engineering, and the humanities. The ubiquitous use of mobile technology has led to an abundance of location-based services that can track users anywhere, providing large spatio-temporal datasets. Spatial databases, for example digitizing efforts in the humanities and daily generation of global vegetation maps, are enabling new kinds of thinking about human and natural variation. Opportunities for interpreting and understanding spatial data are revolutionizing our ability to understand these massive and complex data with new interface systems and visualization platforms. Developing improved spatial research tools is itself a growing area of science, technology, and cultural endeavor. Due to its complexity and ever increasing size, the management of such large spatial datasets poses new and challenging issues. Spatial research is essential for addressing many grand challenges facing society and crosses nearly all the disciplinary boundaries within academe.

    2015–16
    Positions hired: 1

    2016–17
    Positions available: 1

  • Supply Chain, Logistics and Transportation Management

    Goal: Supply chain and logistics activities relate to the acquisition and utilization of resources, the distribution of goods and services, and production processes. They are at the core of many business operations in Southern California. SCLTM has become increasingly important as globalization, outsourcing, and improvements in information technology have led to more effective supply networks. The SCLTM cluster hire will leverage the academic reputation of the Operation and Supply Chain Management (OSCM) area in the School of Business Administration (SoBA), as well as that of the Bourns College of Engineering (BCOE), and create interdisciplinary research relationships between OCSM, SoBA and BCOE.

    2015–16
    Positions hired: 0

    2016–17
    Positions available: 4

    2017–18
    Positions Available:
    Assistant Professor
    Associate/Full Professor

  • The UCR Data Science Center

    The University of California, Riverside has identified Data Science as a strategically important area of focus and growth. This commitment led to the creation of the UCR Data Science Center whose goal is to: (1) establish UCR as a prominent playerin Data Science research; (2) enable new research collaborationsamong faculty across UCR colleges working with big data; (3) open up new opportunities for external funding and collaborations with industry,and (4) educate our students with the knowledge needed to excel in this new and demanding field. The cluster hires will enhance UCR’s research strengths in Data Science and will have potential home departments in the sciences and/or engineering. Candidates are expected to foster research collaborations with existing faculty across academic departments working on Data Science related topics (including astronomy, biological sciences, computational biology, environmental sciences, physics, precision agriculture, etc.).

    2015–16
    Positions hired: 2

    2016–17
    Positions available: 3