Profile

Susan Margulies is Vanderbilt’s Vice Provost for Research and Innovation and a professor of biomedical engineering in the School of Engineering. She leads efforts to define and drive growth in Vanderbilt’s research enterprise, champion sponsored research and strengthen the systems, partnerships and support structures that help faculty and research teams move ideas from concept to funding, implementation, commercialization and impact.

Margulies is known for pioneering research on the mechanisms underlying brain injuries in children and adolescents and lung injuries associated with mechanical ventilation, contributing to improved injury prevention, diagnosis and treatment. Her scholarly record includes more than $35 million in research funding, over 350 peer-reviewed scientific articles, 11 book chapters and mentorship of 50 graduate and postdoctoral trainees. She has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering, National Academy of Medicine, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, National Academy of Inventors and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Before joining Vanderbilt, Margulies served as assistant director of the U.S. National Science Foundation, and led the Directorate for Engineering, which provides more than 40 percent of federal funding for fundamental engineering research at academic institutions. In that role, she launched funding mechanisms to support high-risk, high-reward research and developed partnerships with federal agencies, industry and philanthropic organizations. She also served as a professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, jointly housed in the College of Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology and the School of Medicine at Emory University, where she was a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Injury Biomechanics and department chair from 2017 to 2021. She also spent more than 20 years at the University of Pennsylvania as a scholar, educator, and leader.