Dr. Reginald DesRoches announced this week that Dr. Susan Burns has been named as CEE’s associate chair for undergraduate programs, effective July 1.
Burns will join Dr. Kimberly Kurtis and Dr. Donald Webster who each recently joined DesRoches’ management team as the associate chair of graduate programs and the associate chair of finance and administration, respectively. She takes over from Dr. Jaehong Kim, who has left the Institute.
“I couldn’t be happier with the CEE leadership team,” DesRoches said. “Susan has a broad range of administrative experience at Georgia Tech and has actively mentored many civil engineering students. We need her passion and her skills to continue in our tradition of excellence.”
Recently named as an ASCE Fellow, Burns has chaired the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering's Graduate Committee, served on the School's Statutory Advisory Committee, served as the graduate coordinator for the Geosystems Group, and is currently serving as the group leader for the Geosystems Group in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. At the Institute level, she has served as a member of the Academic Senate and General Faculty Assembly and the Student Academic and Financial Affairs Committee.
Burns earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Georgia Tech in 1990. She went on to earn two master’s degrees from Georgia Tech– one in civil engineering and the other in environmental engineering before returning to earn her doctorate in civil engineering in 1997. After completing her Ph.D., Burns joined the faculty at the University of Virginia where she served for over seven years. In 2004, she joined the CEE faculty at Georgia Tech.
Burns’ research focuses on applications in geoenvironmental engineering, with particular emphasis on the productive reuse of waste materials including dredged sediments, fly ash, and biomass fly ash, treatment of highway stormwater runoff using engineered materials, erosion control of soils on highway rights-of-way, interfacial behavior of organic- and inorganic-coated soils, the transport and behavior of microbubbles in otherwise saturated porous media, and the hydraulic conductivity and consolidation properties of fine-grained soils using seismic piezocone penetration testing (SPCPT).
Burns is a recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER award, the Arthur Casagrande Professional Development Award (ASCE), the Edmund Friedman Young Engineer Award (ASCE), the Alumni Board of Trustees Teaching Award (University of Virginia), and the David Harrison III Award for Undergraduate Advising (University of Virginia). She was awarded a University Teaching Fellowship (University of Virginia), and was named a Class of 1969 Teaching Scholar (Georgia Tech) and a Class of 1969 Teaching Fellow (Georgia Tech). Most recently, she was selected as the recipient of the 2012 CEE appreciation award (CEE, Georgia Tech) and a 2012 Class of 1934 Teaching Effectiveness Award.