Dr. Susan S. Margulies leads the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Engineering in its mission to transform our world for a better tomorrow by driving discovery, inspiring innovation, enriching education, and accelerating access. The NSF’s Engineering Directorate provides over 40 percent of federal funding for fundamental research in engineering at academic institutions, leading to innovative technologies and sustainable impacts in health, agriculture, clean energy and water, resilient infrastructure, advanced manufacturing and communication systems, and many other areas. NSF support also builds the Nation’s workforce capacity in engineering and supports the diversity and inclusion of engineers at all career stages. Projects span frontier research to generate new knowledge, problem-driven research to identify new solutions to societal challenges, and application-driven research to translate discoveries to uses that enhance prosperity, equity and quality of life for all Americans.

Margulies joined the NSF as the assistant director for the Directorate for Engineering in August 2021 after leading the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University. While on detail at the NSF, she is a professor and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar at Georgia Tech and Emory. Margulies is internationally recognized for pioneering studies to identify mechanisms underlying brain injuries in children and adolescents and lung injuries associated with mechanical ventilation, leading to improved injury prevention, diagnosis and treatments.

Margulies’ transdisciplinary scholarly impact has been recognized by her election as fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the Biomedical Engineering Society, and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Medicine.