Assistant Professor Website Examples (& Patterns That Work)

Initial Summary

For an assistant professor, a personal academic website isn't a nice-to-have; it's a tenure-track asset. It's the first thing a prospective PhD student sees when deciding between supervisors, the first thing a programme committee checks when considering you for an invited talk, and the first thing a department head at another institution looks at when considering whether to reach out. Getting it right in your first faculty years sets the tone for your entire early career. This article examines five real, live assistant professor websites, extracts what makes each one work, and gives you the patterns worth implementing before your next grant deadline.

If you've ever Googled a colleague whose research you admire and landed on a confusing department profile page with a blurry 2016 headshot and a PDF list of publications, you know exactly how easy it is to do better   and how few people actually do.

Why Assistant Professors Need Better Websites Than Senior Faculty

Here's the counterintuitive reality: assistant professors need stronger personal websites than full professors, not weaker ones. A full professor with thirty years of publications, a named lab, and a department profile carries enough institutional credibility that a basic web presence can sustain them. An assistant professor starting their independent career is competing for talent, grants, and invitations against researchers with far larger publication records.

Your website is the great equaliser. A beautifully designed, clearly written personal site that communicates your research vision, your lab culture, and your momentum can genuinely compete with a senior colleague's name recognition. But only if you build it well.

Key Insight: Your personal academic website is doing tenure-case work every day whether you've designed it for that purpose or not. Prospective PhD students, collaborators, and search committees all look before they reach out.

1. Lisa Tan –  NUS Singapore

Designed by SitesGo

Prof. Lisa Tan's personal site at NUS is one of the cleanest examples of an assistant professor website doing exactly what it needs to. It's warm, professional, navigable in seconds, and communicates her research identity immediately   without requiring a visitor to read three paragraphs before understanding what she works on.

• First-person voice: Rather than the distant third-person tone common on department pages ("Dr. Tan is an assistant professor of..."), the site reads as if Lisa is speaking directly to visitors. This makes the site feel approachable, which matters enormously for prospective students deciding who to email.
• Custom domain: lisaxtang.com is clean, memorable, and professional, not a department subdomain that could disappear if she moves institutions.
• Uncluttered navigation: Research, Publications, Team, and Contact. Nothing buried, nothing unnecessary. A prospective student from overseas can find everything they need within two clicks.
• Photo-forward: A professional, warm headshot appears prominently. This sounds obvious, but a surprising number of assistant professor sites either bury the PI photo or use a grainy conference snapshot. Prospective students are evaluating whether they want to spend years working with someone; they need to see a face.

Pattern to steal: Write your website in first person. "I study..." reads warmer and more confident than "Dr. X studies...", especially for assistant professors still building name recognition.

2. Oliver Philcox – Stanford University

Prof. Oliver Philcox is an Assistant Professor of Physics at Stanford University, affiliated with the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology. He joined Stanford in 2025 after a Simons Society of Fellows postdoc at Columbia, and his site   built on GitHub Pages with deliberate restraint   is a model for how a newly appointed physicist can signal serious credibility without a single unnecessary design element.

• Content before design: The site is intentionally sparse, no animations, no hero banners, no visual clutter. In physics, where the work speaks loudest, this restraint communicates focus and confidence. A prospective collaborator lands on the page and immediately reaches the substance.‍
• Prize given prominent real estate: The 2024 New Horizons Prize in Physics  one of the most prestigious early-career awards in the field  appears in the opening bio paragraph. For a newly appointed assistant professor, this kind of visible recognition anchors trust before a visitor has read a single paper.‍
• GitHub prominently linked: A direct link to his public code repositories sits alongside the research description. In computational cosmology, open code is a collaborative currency: linking it converts curious visitors into direct collaborators.‍
• Plain-language research summary: Despite working on highly technical topics like the Effective Field Theory of Large Scale Structure, the homepage bio is clear enough for a well-informed non-specialist. He even links a reader-friendly introductory guide to his field, a thoughtful touch for prospective students who are just beginning to explore the area.

Pattern to steal: If you have won a prize or fellowship in the last three years, put it in your opening bio paragraph  not in a separate awards section that most visitors never scroll to. Recognition does trust-building work that a publication list alone cannot.

3. Sarah Wiegreffe –  University of Maryland

Prof. Sarah Wiegreffe joined the Department of Computer Science at the University of Maryland as an Assistant Professor in Fall 2025, coming from a postdoc at the Allen Institute for AI and the University of Washington. Her research focuses on interpretability and transparency of language models   and her personal site demonstrates a pattern increasingly important for early-career CS researchers: using a live news feed to communicate momentum rather than just achievement.

• News section as a momentum signal: The homepage opens with a scrolling list of recent updates   papers accepted, invited talks given, awards received, students mentored. For a researcher just starting a faculty position, this section communicates that the lab is active and building, which matters as much to PhD applicants as a publications list does.
• Group page from day one: Even in the first semester of her faculty appointment, Prof. Wiegreffe maintains a dedicated Group page listing current students and their projects. Starting this page early   before the lab is large   signals that she is taking mentorship seriously and recruits the next cohort of students.
• Short bio for talks, publicly available: A plain-text short biography formatted for conference and seminar use is linked directly from the homepage. This is a small touch that saves organisers time and ensures her bio is accurate whenever she is introduced to a subtle signal of professionalisation.
• Research framed around a clear question: The homepage bio leads with the research problem   interpretability and transparency of language models   before listing affiliations or academic biography. This ordering makes the site immediately useful for a journalist, a collaborator, or a prospective PhD student trying to assess fit.

Pattern to steal: Start a news or updates section on your site and maintain it monthly. A rolling record of recent activity   papers, talks, students, grants   communicates forward momentum to every visitor and turns a static site into a live signal of a thriving research programme.

4. Tian Li  – University of Chicago

Prof. Tian Li is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and the Data Science Institute at the University of Chicago. Her research centres on large-scale machine learning and optimization, with particular focus on federated learning   and her personal site shows how a technically strong assistant professor can build a site that simultaneously serves peer researchers, prospective PhD students, and grant-making bodies without overwhelming any of them.

• Research framed for multiple readers at once: The homepage research description is technical enough for a peer ML researcher to understand the specific contributions, but structured clearly enough for a non-specialist (such as a programme officer at NSF) to grasp the significance. This dual-register writing is one of the hardest things to get right on an academic website, and Prof. Li achieves it.
• Group page with current students listed by name: The Group section names every current PhD student and postdoc, with links to their own pages where available. For prospective students evaluating supervisors, this communicates that current trainees are visible, supported, and have their own professional presence, a strong indirect signal of mentorship culture.
• Teaching section kept current: Each course Prof. Li teaches appears in the Teaching section with the semester and year, including links to course sites where available. This level of maintenance signals to promotion committees that teaching is treated as a genuine part of professional identity.
• Talks section with video links: Selected invited talks are listed with links to recordings. This extends the reach of each talk far beyond the original audience and gives a concrete sense of how Prof. Li communicates her work in different settings   useful for conference organisers evaluating whether to invite her.

Pattern to steal: List your graduate students by name on your group page from your first semester, even if there is only one. It signals that you take mentorship seriously, and it immediately begins building the visible record of your lab's human culture.

5. Elaine Yao –  Washington University in St. Louis

Prof. Elaine Yao completed her PhD at Princeton in 2025 and joined the Department of Political Science at Washington University in St. Louis as an Assistant Professor in the same year   making her site one of the most freshly built examples in this article. Her site is notable not for what it includes but for what it deliberately leaves out, and for how it demonstrates that a new faculty member can communicate genuine intellectual identity with a small number of carefully chosen elements.

• Research statement that leads with the question, not the methodology: The homepage bio opens by framing the core intellectual puzzle   how group decision-making processes shape coordination and collective action   before introducing any technical or methodological vocabulary. This ordering keeps the site accessible to the widest possible range of visitors, including potential collaborators outside formal theory, while remaining precise enough to signal expertise.
• Spare, portable infrastructure: Built on GitHub Pages using the AcademicPages template, the site is fast, mobile-friendly, and fully under Prof. Yao's own control   not dependent on institutional hosting that would need to be rebuilt with each career move. For a researcher at the very start of a faculty career, this portability is a form of strategic planning.
• CV download linked prominently: A direct link to the full CV appears in the homepage bio. For political science   where job markets, grant applications, and invited speaker decisions frequently begin with a CV review, making this document one click away from the homepage is both practical and professionally signalling.
• Navigation kept to three sections: Research, Teaching & Advising, and the homepage itself. At an early career stage, before a lab is large and before a teaching portfolio is deep, this restraint is correct. A sparse site maintained carefully is stronger than an elaborate site that cannot be kept current.

Pattern to steal: Resist the urge to build a maximally complex site on day one of your faculty position. A clean, well-maintained three-page site  homepage, research, teaching  communicates focus and professionalism. You can always add sections as the career grows; a half-empty "Lab Members" page or a "News" section with a single 2023 entry does more harm than no section at all.

6. Jing Ma – Case Western Reserve University

Prof. Jing Ma holds the Timothy E. and Allison L. Schroeder Assistant Professorship (tenure track) in the Department of Computer and Data Sciences at Case Western Reserve University. Having completed her PhD at the University of Virginia in 2023, her site demonstrates how a junior faculty member can use a personal website to communicate a coherent research identity across the multiple subfields   trustworthy AI, causal inference, graph learning   that define her early programme.

• Named professorship prominently displayed: The endowed nature of Prof. Ma's appointment of the Timothy E. and Allison L. Schroeder Assistant Professorship   is included in the homepage bio. Named professorships, even at the assistant level, signal departmental investment and competitive standing; displaying it correctly on the personal site ensures that visitors encounter this credential without having to hunt through a CV.
• Awards section with a dedicated page: An entire Awards section lists honours including the AAAI 2024 New Faculty Highlights recognition. For an assistant professor whose career is still in the period where each award is individually significant, giving awards their own visible section   rather than burying them in a CV   performs real trust-building work with visitors who are evaluating scientific credibility.
• Service prominently listed: A dedicated Service section lists programme committee memberships and reviewing roles across major AI conferences. In CS, where community service is tracked and valued by promotion committees, making this visible on the personal site reinforces the picture of a scholar engaged in the full breadth of professional life, not only research output.
• Multiple contact channels clearly provided: Email, Google Scholar, GitHub, LinkedIn, and Twitter (X) all appear in the sidebar. For an early-career researcher working across a rapidly moving field where collaboration opportunities emerge through multiple channels, making each of these reachable from the homepage is a practical efficiency.

Pattern to steal: If your appointment carries a named endowment or a competitive fellowship title, include it in the first line of your homepage bio  not just in the CV. Visitors form their first impression in seconds, and this kind of institutional recognition signals a level of competitive standing that a plain "Assistant Professor of X" title does not convey on its own.

The Practical Framework: What Every Assistant Professor Website Needs

Based on the examples above and the common failure modes of academic personal websites, every assistant professor site should include the following:

A homepage that passes the five-second test: Who you are, what you research, and where you are located should be immediately clear. A professional photo and a one-to-two sentence bio accomplish this. Don't bury it below a carousel or a long introduction.

A research page that speaks to multiple audiences: One version for peer researchers (links to papers, methods described with appropriate technical depth) and one for prospective students and collaborators (plain-language descriptions of the questions you're trying to answer). The best sites achieve both without making either audience feel like an afterthought.

A publications page with download links: Listing publications without links is a missed citation opportunity. Every paper should link to either the open-access version, your preprint, or the accepted manuscript PDF on your own site.

A team or people page that signals culture: Photos and bios of current lab members, welcome posts for new members, and an alumni placement record communicate that this is an active, human, community-oriented research group.

A clear joining or recruiting section: "I am accepting PhD students for [intake year]" or "I am not currently taking students" should appear prominently. Ambiguity costs you applicants who simply move to the next site.

A custom domain: yourname.com or yourlabname.com   not a department subdomain. A custom domain is a small annual investment that makes your site portable, professional, and persistent across institutional moves.

Not sure what your website should emphasize at your career stage?

We’ll suggest a structure suited specifically for assistant professors hiring, tenure, and collaboration visibility

→ Plan my faculty website structure

The Design Patterns That Make Assistant Professor Sites Work

Pattern 1: First-Person Voice

Write in first person throughout. "I study..." and "My research investigates..." read warmer and more authoritative than third-person prose on a personal site. Reserve third-person for your official department profile and formal grant applications.

Pattern 2: Lead with Vision, Not Biography

Your educational history is the least interesting thing on your website for most visitors. Lead with your research vision   the question you've dedicated your career to answering. Your CV is one click away for those who want the biographical detail.

Pattern 3: Signal Momentum, Not Just Achievement

Assistant professors need to communicate not just what they've done but where they're going. Upcoming conference talks, new papers in revision, and new team members all signal a lab that's building momentum   which is exactly what PhD applicants and collaborators want to see.

Pattern 4: Update Quarterly at a Minimum

A site that hasn't been updated since your start date signals stagnation. A brief news post or a new paper upload every quarter keeps the site feeling active and current.

Pattern 5: Invest in a Professional Headshot

A bad headshot costs more than it saves. Prospective students, collaborators, and conference organisers form immediate impressions from your photo. A professional headshot   warm, current, high-resolution   communicates competence and approachability simultaneously.

Pattern 6: Document Student Outcomes

Every student or postdoc who trains with you and goes on to a good next position is a testament to your mentorship. List them, with their destinations, on your people page. This is one of the most underused and most effective recruiting tools available to an early-career researcher.

Key Insight: The five-second test for assistant professor sites: within five seconds, can a prospective PhD student from overseas tell (1) what you research, (2) whether you're currently recruiting, and (3) whether you seem like someone they'd want to work with? If any of these fail, the site needs work.

Build Website That Recruits for You

A great personal academic website isn't just a portfolio, it's a recruiting tool, a trust signal, and a reputation asset working for you around the clock. The examples in this article have figured that out. Whether you build it yourself or work with a specialist like SitesGo, the investment compounds over every year of your career

-> Build my lab website

Frequently Asked Questions

Should an assistant professor have a personal site or a lab site?

Ideally both, but if you can only maintain one, start with a personal academic site that includes a lab section. As your group grows, splitting into a dedicated lab site and a streamlined personal site makes sense. Many researchers maintain both   a lab site for the group's collective identity and a personal site for individual publications, bio, and speaking engagements.

When should an assistant professor build their website?

The moment you accept a faculty position, ideally before you start. Your new institution will announce your hire; people will Google you. A professional website from day one creates the right first impression with your incoming graduate students, departmental colleagues, and the broader research community.

How much should an assistant professor spend on a website?

The cost of a professionally built academic website ranges from a few hundred dollars with a specialist template service to a few thousand with a boutique academic web design agency. For context: a single grant awarded, a single PhD student recruited who might otherwise have gone elsewhere, or a single invited talk secured through a site that made you look credible is worth multiples of that investment.

Should I include my teaching materials on my website?

Selectively, yes. Course descriptions and brief syllabus summaries show search committees and prospective students that you take teaching seriously. Full lecture slide decks can live on your university's learning management system rather than cluttering your personal site. A teaching philosophy paragraph on your site is more useful than a stack of PDFs.

How do I handle the "currently accepting students" question?

Be explicit and update it every admissions cycle. A single sentence   "I am accepting PhD students for [year] intake in [topic area]" or "I am not currently accepting new PhD students"   saves everyone's time. The best applicants are evaluating multiple supervisors simultaneously; ambiguity is read as unwelcoming, and they will move on quickly.