Harvard Science Division Launches Five AI-Related Faculty Searches

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ science departments are launching at least five artificial intelligence-related faculty searches, after Dean of Science David T. Johnston pitched themed searches to secure new positions amid a hiring freeze.

The five searches span at least eight departments in the Division of Science and seek faculty who will apply AI to their work. They come more than a year after Harvard first announced a pause on faculty and staff hiring — and as University leaders highlight the use of AI in research.

“I strongly believe that this is our only opportunity to actually get FTEs in the door in the next year, so the better our pitch, the more Science will benefit,” Dean of Science David T. Johnston wrote in a March email to Division of Science chairs announcing the new hiring scheme.

Three searches — two Statistics Department searches in statistics and AI and one cross-departmental search in life sciences and AI — have already been posted to Harvard’s hiring website. There will also be a faculty search focusing on landscape ecology, remote sensing, and conservation, according to a department chair in the Division of Science familiar with the matter. Two physics professors confirmed another search in quantum science and AI involving the Physics and Chemistry departments.

In the March 4 email to Division of Science chairs, Johnston wrote that the hiring process would “look quite different from past years” and that he would “share what we have been asked to do.”

The plan was to formulate a pitch for roughly five full-time equivalent faculty positions for the division, “with the request that this list have: 1. a coherent intellectual thread [not a bunch of disparate fields] and 2. have some tangible ties to our undergraduate mission and teaching,” he wrote in the email.

That thread would be applying “cutting-edge AI tools to address new frontiers in science,” recruiting not just casual users of the technology seeking greater efficiency but scientists who were “really pushing the limits.”

FAS spokesperson James M. Chisholm confirmed that the idea for the intellectual thread and ties to undergraduate teaching, as well as the AI focus itself, originated with Johnston — not another FAS administrator, including FAS Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra.

“Every Divisional Dean devises their own plan to request searches for their division,” Chisholm wrote in a statement. “Dean Johnston proposed a strategy to his faculty that he believed would be successful, and he secured 5.5 search authorizations for his division.”

Those searches were “approved through the current FAS process, will be funded by the FAS, and will be filled through the FAS’s standard faculty search and hiring process,” according to Chisholm.

Johnston argued in the email to chairs that AI tools would have a significant impact on growth in the sciences and that having “more expertise and innovators” on campus would allow the division to bring AI tools into the classroom more effectively. He pointed to potential enthusiasm within the division, saying he inferred “some level of Departmental support” as the tools were a “common theme” at recent chairs’ meetings.

Johnston also referenced broader institutional support. In recent months, Harvard leaders — including Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 — have touted the use of AI in academic research and discussed potential applications in the classroom.

“There is a lot of effort in this area at the higher levels of the University, so I believe our pitch will be compelling,” Johnston wrote in the email, adding that he encouraged cross-departmental collaboration on search ideas.

A Division of Science department chair familiar with the matter said Life Sciences chairs convened to discuss hiring and pitched multiple scenarios. One of their cross-departmental searches has already been posted to Harvard’s website — a call for “a tenure-track professor whose research is at the interface of AI and life sciences,” involving the departments of Earth and Planetary Science, Human Evolutionary Biology, Molecular and Cellular Biology, Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, and Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology.

Another search across EPS, HEB, and OEB on landscape ecology, remote sensing, and conservation is in the works, according to the Division of Science chair, though it has not yet been posted.

Two searches for a tenure-track and tenured professor in statistics and AI are also on Harvard’s hiring website, seeking scholars whose work “advances the interface of statistics and AI, from foundational and methodological developments to integrated theoretical and applied approaches to trustworthy AI-enabled discovery.” Statistics Department chair Xihong Lin confirmed that the two postings were part of the divisional AI-related searches.

A final search in quantum science and AI, including the Physics and Chemistry departments, will also take place, according to physics professor Subir Sachdev and another Physics professor who was granted anonymity to discuss hiring.

Academic units outside the Division of Science have also independently launched AI searches. The School of Engineering and Applied Sciences posted a tenure-track computer science faculty position to Harvard’s hiring website inviting faculty “bridging AI with other areas of Computer Science.”

In the FAS’s Division of Social Science, the Psychology department has also listed a search for a tenure-track faculty member in clinical psychology. The listing cites “data science (including ML/AI, computational modeling, and related approaches), cognitive neuroscience, genetic, or cross-cultural work” as attractive approaches for applicants.

The new hiring focus comes amid broader pushes to reshape faculty hiring at Harvard. Though the AI searches emerged at the FAS divisional level, Harvard Provost John F. Manning ’82 has taken an active role in establishing hiring lines amid the freeze and led an effort to ask donors for $10 million endowed professorships flagged for “viewpoint diversity.”

Faculty have remained divided over those efforts. Not all science faculty fully welcomed the AI focus either.

Astronomy professor Abraham “Avi” Loeb wrote in a statement that though education and research at Harvard were being profoundly affected by AI and that faculty choices would have to take AI into account, it would be difficult to base long-term faculty appointments on a fast-changing technology.

“It would therefore be prudent to wait a few years and see more clearly where things are headed with AI, before committing to a major campaign of faculty hires,” he wrote.

Others took issue with the form of the searches. MCB professor Venkatesh N. Murthy, who is leading one of the cross-departmental searches, said the approach to the search was unusual.

“Typically, the departments put forth areas of search,” Murthy said.

“This one seems a bit, or is a bit more top-down,” he added.

HEB professor Daniel E. Lieberman ’86, who said he was not involved in the search, wrote in a statement that he was concerned about “top-down” efforts.

“Faculty not Deans should be deciding in what fields to search based on curricular and research needs,” he wrote.

But some said the searches represented a careful compromise amid hiring and budgetary constraints.

“I’d prefer there were other searches too, and there are many things happening in other fields also,” Sachdev said. “But I could see why the deans feel that this is not something they can just cut, given how quickly the whole environment is changing.”

—Staff writer Abigail S. Gerstein can be reached at [email protected] and on Signal at abbysg.97. Follow her on X @abbysgerstein.

—Staff writer Amann S. Mahajan can be reached at [email protected] and on Signal at amannsm.38. Follow her on X @amannmahajan.