The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) in the Batten College of Engineering and Technology (BCET) at Old Dominion University (ODU) in Norfolk, VA, invites applications for a tenure-track assistant professor position in Smart and Resilient Infrastructure starting in Fall 2026. This is a 10-month appointment.
The position is part of ODU's Centennial Faculty Cluster Hire initiative within the SLR and coastal resilience research focus area and will play an important role in advancing the strategic vision of both the BCET and ODU in terms of addressing global challenges associated with SLR and natural hazards. This faculty member is expected to develop transdisciplinary research, education, and outreach programs that can integrate advanced sensing networks, autonomous monitoring systems, digital twin technologies, and intelligent materials to improve the durability, performance, and hazard protection of onshore and offshore coastal infrastructure. The design of climate-smart infrastructure for vulnerable coastal communities through development of accurate hazard and risk assessment tools is a desired outcome of these efforts. This position is envisioned to foster synergy with other cluster hire faculty members, including that in the Department of Ocean and Earth Sciences (OES), and across several subdisciplines within CEE, including coastal engineering, geotechnical engineering, coastal geotechnics, transportation engineering, structural engineering and environmental and water resources engineering.
The successful candidate will develop and lead research on smart, resilient infrastructure—such as coastal defenses, offshore structures, and critical facilities—designed to withstand oceanic forces and natural hazards. They should have strong expertise in wave-structure interaction and/or community-scale planning, including hazard mitigation, coastal adaptation, and economic resilience (e.g., cost-benefit and life-cycle analysis). The work may involve collecting and integrating field data from instrumented and monitored infrastructure with coastal hydrodynamic data and analyzing those data using AI/ML tools, numerical modeling, coastal hydrology, spatial planning, and socio-economic analyses, to produce results that can be used to design and develop resilient coastal infrastructure systems and adaptation strategies using advanced and sustainable materials.
