Iowastate

Iowastate

Postdoctoral Research Associate, Translational AI Center (TrAC)

Ames, IA · Full-time

Sponsorship not specifiedDetected 1 day ago
PythonCloud PlatformsMachine LearningData ScienceLLMsRAGAgentic AICybersecurityDetection EngineeringHRMechanical DesignResearchCollaborationMentoring

About the role

  • The position will involve close collaboration with interdisciplinary teams spanning artificial intelligence, engineering, agriculture, plant and animal sciences, and cybersecurity.
  • Expected activities include publishing high-impact research, mentoring graduate students, contributing to research proposals, and supporting the development of externally funded, multi-institutional projects.

Responsibilities

  • The successful candidate will develop large-scale, trustworthy agentic AI frameworks for agricultural security applications, with an emphasis on detecting, understanding, and responding to biological threats.

Requirements

  • Demonstrated research experience with large language models, generative AI, agentic AI, or related foundation model technologies.

Nice to have

  • Research experience in uncertainty quantification, model calibration, confidence estimation, hallucination detection, or reliability assessment for large language models and agentic AI systems.
  • Experience mentoring graduate or undergraduate students in research settings.
  • Experience contributing to federal research proposals, sponsored research applications, and collaborative project reports.
  • Familiarity with scalable computing environments, cloud platforms, high-performance computing, distributed AI systems, or large-scale data pipelines.
  • Evidence of open-source software development, reproducible research practices, and successful interdisciplinary collaboration.
  • Demonstrated record of scholarly productivity, including publications in reputable peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings.
  • Department/Program & College Description:
  • Department Unit/Website:

Skills

  • The center fosters collaborative, interdisciplinary research while emphasizing trustworthy, scalable, and socially responsible AI solutions.

Compensation

  • Number of Months Employed Per Year:

Benefits

  • Retirement benefits including defined benefit and defined contribution plans
  • Generous vacation, holiday, and sick time and leave plans
  • Life insurance and long-term disability
  • Flexible Spending Accounts
  • Various voluntary benefits and discounts
  • Wellbeing program
  • The scholar will also contribute to TrAC's education and workforce development mission by developing and delivering AI workshops, tutorials, and microcredential programs.

Equal opportunity

  • Iowa State University does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, age, ethnicity, religion, national origin, pregnancy, sexual orientation, genetic information, sex, marital status, disability, or status as a U.S. Veteran.
  • Inquiries regarding non-discrimination policies may be directed to Office of Equal Opportunity, 2680 Beardshear Hall, 515 Morrill Road, Ames, Iowa 50011, Tel.
  • 515-294-7612, email eooffice@iastate.edu.
  • General ISU compensation information can be found on the University Human Resources website.

This listing is sourced directly from Iowastate's careers page and normalized into a canonical job model.