Stony Brook Kicks Off Hiring Initiative

Stony Brook University has announced its intent to hire 25 new faculty members as part of its SUNY 2020 plan, which will eventually lead to a total of 250 new faculty hires over the next five years.

The new faculty members will be added based on five interdisciplinary clusters that were chosen from a pool of 36 proposals. According to the university, those were chosen because of their national and international relevance, the possibility for new avenues of collaboration between faculty in different fields, and the potential impact on not only undergraduate and graduate education at Stony Brook but also on the academic community at large in emerging fields of study.

According to the university, faculty members will be hired in the areas of biomolecular imaging, behavioral political economy, coastal zone management and engineering, smart energy technology, and photon science at the Joint Stony Brook-Brookhaven National Laboratory Photon Science Institute (JPSI).

“The goals of the cluster hiring initiative are to strategically place Stony Brook University on the emerging frontiers of research and knowledge and to enhance our ability to shape new fields of discovery, learning and engagement,” Stony Brook University President Dr. Samuel L. Stanley Jr. said in a statement. “It will rejuvenate the intellectual capital of Stony Brook University and expand teaching and research in emerging fields of study that cut across traditional boundaries of academic disciplines.”

Lauren Sheprow, a university spokeswoman, said the salary range for each position depends on not only experience, but also on the discipline and the field.

"For positions in the Biomolecular Image Cluster for example the starting salary could range from $80,000 to $100,000," Sheprow said, "but it really depends on multiple factors since many of them are not known when a search is initiated for a faculty member in an interdisciplinary cluster."

A second cluster of positions will be funded in the near future based on another request for proposals that will be issued within the next few days, according to a university release.