Job Information
Washington State University Assistant or Associate Professor in Critical Minerals for the Energy Transition Tenure Track in Pullman, Washington
Assistant or Associate Professor in Critical Minerals for the Energy Transition Tenure Track
Online applications must be received before 12:00am on:
February 4, 2025
If a date is not listed above, review the Applicant Instructions below for more details.
Available Title(s):
270-NNFACULTY - Assistant Professor, 280-NNFACULTY - Associate Professor, 395-NN_FACULTY - New Tenure-Track - Pre-Academic Year
Business Title:
Assistant or Associate Professor in Critical Minerals for the Energy Transition - Tenure Track
Employee Type:
Faculty
Position Term:
9 Month
Position Details:
Position Summary:
The School of the Environment at Washington State University (WSU) Pullman Campus, in Pullman, Washington invites applications from emerging scholars to join our community as a permanent, full-time, nine-month, tenure-track faculty in critical minerals and mineral resources at the Assistant or Associate Professor level. WSU is recruiting outstanding tenure track faculty to join the newly established Institute for Northwest Energy Futures (INEF). INEF is an interdisciplinary institute dedicated to harnessing expertise across the WSU system and collaborating with research partners, including the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), to address the increasing demands for resilient, affordable, and low-carbon electricity and transportation fuels in the Pacific Northwest region. The cluster hire includes an institute director, with some faculty to be located on WSU's Pullman campus (including this position) and other faculty to be located at WSU Tri-Cities campus. Establishing this cross-campus connection will enable the INEF to deploy the full resources of the WSU system, fostering collaboration and innovation. It is our expectation that the successful candidate will have the ability to apply for security clearance from U.S. Department of Energy and/or Pacific Northwest National Laboratories (PNNL) required to gain access to restricted areas. It is anticipated that the successful candidate will begin the appointment on August 16, 2025, January 1, 2026, or August 16, 2026, depending on availability of candidate and needs of the program.
The Opportunity:
Our planet's rapidly changing climate dictates that we must quickly transition to a carbon-neutral energy future. This transition will require an increasing domestic supply of mineral resources containing critical minerals, such as lithium, copper, nickel, aluminum, zinc, cobalt, manganese, platinum, and rare-earth elements.For this position, we seek applicants who work on fundamental Earth science questions related to critical minerals sources, such as the processes that concentrate and transport elements, and the economic viability of their extraction and production-all done within an equitable, just, sustainable, and environmentally sound framework. We seek applicants in research areas that include, but are not limited to, economic geology, ore recovery, deposit formation including processes that involve the concentration, mobilization and separation of minerals from the deep crust to the critical zone. We are particularly interested in candidates who conduct research with innovative experimental, geochemical, geochronological, and other analytical techniques enabled by the School of the Environment's existing laboratories (FE-EPMA, LA-MC-ICP-MS, LA-ICP-MS, LA-ICP-MS/MS, XRF, 900 ft2 Class-1000 clean lab).
Job duties:
• Teach undergraduate and graduate courses and play an important role in recruiting underg
