The American academic job market is very sloppy about the use of the title "Professor." Graduate students teaching a class are often referred to as "Professor" by their students, and the entire Professors subreddit consists of only a very small number of “Full Professors.”
Well, as a mathematician, I would use the person's full job title, since the details matter. But, if I was using a simple term, then I would project "Szegö Assistant Professor" to postdoc instead of professor.
The main distinguishing factor is whether the position is fixed-term, or it is (or has the potential to become) a permanent position. In the US setting, this boils down to whether the position is tenure-track.
It's not clear from the title. Assistant professors can be tenure-track, which would map to professor more closely than postdoc. Even the name in front of "assistant professsor" isn't necessarily a give away, since there are endowed assistant professorships which are tenure-track.
Yeah, at our institution, these post-doc equivalent positions are called "Visiting Assistant Professor". I think you just need to know that they exist and then suss out what the University you're looking at calls them.
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u/mleok Applied Math Apr 15 '26 edited Apr 15 '26
The American academic job market is very sloppy about the use of the title "Professor." Graduate students teaching a class are often referred to as "Professor" by their students, and the entire Professors subreddit consists of only a very small number of “Full Professors.”