Postdoctoral Research Associate

📋 Description

• • Join Texas A&M AgriLife Research in Temple, TX as a Postdoctoral Research Associate and become a key contributor to the nation’s largest, most comprehensive agriculture program. You will work shoulder-to-shoulder with a multidisciplinary team of Texas A&M AgriLife and USDA scientists to pioneer the next generation of digital agriculture solutions that directly improve crop productivity, environmental stewardship, and economic outcomes for producers across Texas and beyond.
• • Lead and manage large-scale field experiments that serve as living laboratories for innovation. From experimental design through harvest, you will oversee plot layout, sensor deployment, drone flights, and ground-truth data collection, ensuring every data point feeds into high-impact research outputs and practical decision-support tools.
• • Operate, test, and validate state-of-the-art crop models (e.g., DSSAT, APSIM, AquaCrop) against multi-source observations. You will iteratively refine model parameters, assimilate remote-sensing and IoT data streams, and quantify prediction accuracy to deliver actionable insights for precision and prescriptive agriculture interventions.
• • Architect and deploy machine-learning and AI algorithms that transform terabytes of geospatial, environmental, and phenotypic data into real-time recommendations for irrigation scheduling, nutrient management, pest scouting, and yield forecasting. Your code will be version-controlled, reproducible, and scalable across cloud and high-performance computing environments.
• • Publish first-author and collaborative manuscripts in top-tier journals (Agricultural & Forest Meteorology, Remote Sensing of Environment, Field Crops Research, etc.) and present findings at national and international conferences. You will be expected to contribute to at least three peer-reviewed papers per year and actively seek opportunities to translate research into extension bulletins and grower-ready tools.
• • Co-author competitive grant proposals to federal agencies (USDA-NIFA, NSF, DOE), commodity boards, and industry partners. Your ability to craft compelling narratives that integrate modeling, sensing, and data science will help secure multi-million-dollar funding that sustains and expands the digital agriculture program.
• • Mentor graduate students, undergraduate interns, and visiting scholars, fostering a culture of scientific rigor, open science, and inclusive collaboration. You will lead weekly lab meetings, code reviews, and field days that accelerate learning and professional development for the entire team.
• • Collaborate with stakeholders across the Texas A&M University System—including AgriLife Extension agents, CALS faculty, and partner universities (Prairie View A&M, Tarleton State, Texas A&M-Kingsville, etc.)—to ensure research outcomes are co-developed, field-validated, and rapidly adopted by producers, consultants, and policymakers.
• • Contribute to the broader AgriLife mission by participating in outreach events, K-12 STEM activities, and industry field days. Your role extends beyond the lab and field; you will serve as an ambassador for data-driven agriculture, translating complex science into practical benefits for society and the environment.