Assistant- or Associate-Professor
Company: UNC-Chapel Hill
Location: Chapel Hill
Posted on: April 1, 2026
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Job Description:
Position Summary The Department of Physics and Astronomy at UNC
Chapel Hill seeks a tenure-track faculty member to design and carry
out cutting-edge research programs that make use of our unique
observational facilities. This will be the first of several hires
aimed at building strength in our astronomy program. UNC Chapel
Hill is the founding member of the SOAR project and has 61 nights
guaranteed annually on the highly subscribed telescope atop Cerro
Pachon, Chile. SOAR is equipped with high-speed queue-based
spectroscopic capabilities and resides within 2 km of the Rubin
Observatory
(https://noirlab.edu/public/programs/ctio/soar-telescope/). UNC is
also the lead institution for the Argus Array extremely-wide-field
5m-class time-domain-survey telescope, the Skynet rapid-response
array located on four continents, and the Evryscope all-sky survey;
our labs built SOAR’s Goodman high-throughput spectrograph. We are
seeking leading candidates to be hired at either the Assistant- or
Associate-professor level, in all areas of observational
astrophysics and/or telescope instrumentation. We are specifically
interested in candidates who leverage SOAR’s capabilities, in
possible combination with other internal and external facilities.
In addition, we are seeking candidates whose approach to teaching
and mentoring will promote student success in a public university
serving a diverse constituency that includes a large proportion of
first-generation university students (see
https://physics.unc.edu/community/ and
https://www.unc.edu/story/first-generation-students-at-carolina/).
Successful candidates will have the opportunity to work in
collaboration with our groups in general observational astronomy;
exoplanets and stars; experimental astrophysics; computational
astrophysics and gravity; high-energy and cosmology theory; and
neutrino and nuclear astrophysics. Our instrumentation labs are
designed for large and small telescope instrumentation projects,
with holographic-spectrograph-grating manufacturing capabilities
and an extensive machine shop with full-time machinists. UNC Chapel
Hill has significant high-performance computing resources,
including the 17,000-core Longleaf cluster
(https://help.rc.unc.edu/longleaf-cluster/) optimized for I/O
intensive workloads with dedicated GPU and large-memory partitions.
The Research Triangle area is a dynamic collaborative environment
with UNC -Chapel Hill, Duke University, and North Carolina State
University all located within close proximity. Preferred
Qualifications, Competencies, And Experience A PhD in astrophysics,
astronomy, or related field is required. Candidate must have
Postdoctoral experience in observational and/or instrumental
astrophysics.
Keywords: UNC-Chapel Hill, Greenville , Assistant- or Associate-Professor, Science, Research & Development , Chapel Hill, North Carolina
