Hiring
We are recruiting postdoctoral researchers and graduate students working on the water-agriculture nexus from microscale to macroscale.
We are looking for highly motivated, enthusiastic members interested in (1) improving plant traits and soil health through plant-soil-microbe interactions, and (2) unraveling the water, nutrient, and carbon cycles that connect agricultural landscapes to productivity and environmental sustainability.
Plant-soil & plant-soil-microbe interactions
This position is to build multi-scale plant-soil and plant-soil-microbe interaction models and further integrate these models with multi-omics and meta-omics data to investigate the synergies and tradeoffs of multiple plant or/and microbial traits and their impacts on crop water use efficiency (WUE) and nitrogen use efficiency (NUE). The work is expected to be fully integrated with advanced breeding and bioengineering programs. Candidates with strong research interests, background, and potential in computational systems biology, quantitative genetics, crop growth modeling, plant functional-structural modeling, root growth and rhizosphere modeling, soil hydrology and reactive transport modeling, microbial ecology and biogeochemistry modeling, and earth system modeling are encouraged to apply.
Field-to-watershed hydrology & water quality
From the monitoring side, this position is to discover fundamental knowledge about water and nutrient cycling with high-frequency hydrological and water quality monitoring data from IoT sensor networks and to reveal spatial patterns of hydrological and water quality variables through integrated sensing with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and satellites. From the modeling side, this position is to build next-generation field-to-watershed hydrological and water quality models and use systems modeling to advance our understanding of the complex scaling from field-scale conservation management to watershed-scale hydrological and water quality responses. Candidates with strong research interests, background, and potential in sensor networks, remote sensing (UAV and satellite), agroecosystem modeling, biogeochemical modeling, coupled surface-subsurface hydrological modeling, watershed hydrological modeling, reactive transport modeling, and river hydraulic modeling are particularly encouraged to apply.
AI for science & environmental data science
This position is to leverage state-of-the-art AI and machine learning to advance research in crop, soil, and environmental sciences. Topics of interest include LLM-based multi-agent systems for scientific reasoning, reinforcement learning for decision making, knowledge-guided machine learning and differentiable models for prediction problems in crop, soil, and environmental sciences, and deep learning in remote sensing and geospatial big data analytics. Candidates with strong research interests, background, and potential in LLM, AI, machine learning, deep learning, quantitative remote sensing (optical, thermal, and microwave), and geospatial analytics are particularly encouraged to apply. Experience in handling large-scale datasets is highly preferred.
Agriculture in the Earth system & sustainable agrifood systems
This position is to improve the representation of agriculture and human management in Earth System Models for assessing different land management strategies and quantifying water (blue, green, and gray) and carbon footprints of agricultural production at regional to global scales. Candidates with strong research interests, background, and potential in earth system modeling, large-scale hydrological modeling, ecosystem modeling, crop growth modeling, and geospatial data science are encouraged to apply.
Digital agriculture & precision conservation
This position is to build digital solutions for supporting decision making in agriculture and conservation. Candidates with strong research interests, background, and potential in geospatial data science, process-based and data-driven modeling, decision support systems, and real-world solutions are encouraged to apply.
How to apply
Send a cover letter, CV, a brief personal statement of research interests, unofficial transcripts for undergraduate and graduate programs, and contact information for three references to binpeng@illinois.edu with the email subject of “Prospective postdoc” or “Prospective PhD student”. Please mention which area(s) you're interested in.