Susan E. Burns

Susan E. Burns, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE is the interim Associate Vice President for Research Operations and Infrastructure and Dwight H. Evans Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. She earned a B.C.E. Civil Engineering (1990), M.S. Civil Engineering (1996), M.S. Environmental Engineering (1996), and Ph.D. in Civil Engineering (1997), all from Georgia Tech. Dr. Burns joined the faculty at Georgia Tech in 2004, after serving on the faculty at the University of Virginia. Her research focuses on applications in geoenvironmental engineering, with emphasis on the beneficial use of waste materials including dredged sediments, fly ash, and biomass fly ash, interfacial behavior of organic- and inorganic-coated soils, transport of microplastics through porous media, and bio-mediated soil improvement.

Dr. Burns is a past member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) Standing Committee on Geological and Geotechnical Engineering, and NASEM’s Committee on Assessment of the Performance of Engineered Waste Containment Barriers and Committee on Corrosion of Buried Steel at New and In-Service Infrastructure. Dr. Burns is the incoming president of the American Society of Civil Engineers Geo-Institute and has served as the president of the United States Universities Council on Geotechnical Education and Research (USUCGER), an organization of approximately 400 professors of geotechnical engineering in the US and abroad. She is a recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers, was named the 2020 Engineer of the Year by the Georgia Society of Professional Engineers, and received the 2021 Class of 1940 W. Howard Ector Outstanding Teacher Award from Georgia Tech.