Susanne Shontz named School of Engineering associate dean for research

LAWRENCE — Suzanne Shontz, professor of electrical engineering & computer science at the University of Kansas School of Engineering, has been selected to serve as the school’s associate dean for research.

“Professor Shontz has an exemplary research portfolio and is recognized internationally as a leader in her area, parallel scientific computing,” said Arvin Agah, dean of engineering. “I look forward to working with her to continue to elevate the stature of KU Engineering.”

Shontz has extensive leadership and administrative experience, including:

• Founding director of KU’s interdisciplinary computing degree program
• Graduate studies director for KU’s Bioengineering Program
• Director of the Mathematical Methods and Interdisciplinary Computing Center at KU’s Institute for Information Sciences (formerly ITTC).

She has also served as University Senate President and participated in the Senior Administrative Fellows Program.

Shontz replaces Candan Tamerler, who joined the KU Office of Research as associate vice chancellor in July.

About Suzanne Shontz

Shontz's research interests lie in the area of parallel scientific computing. In particular, her research focuses on the development of unstructured meshing, numerical optimization, model order reduction, and numerical linear algebra algorithms and their applications to computational medicine, imaging sciences, materials and electronic circuits, among others.

Shontz received her doctorate in applied mathematics from Cornell University in 2005. She received bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and chemistry from the University of Northern Iowa in 1999 and master’s degrees in computer science and applied mathematics from Cornell University in 2002. Prior to joining KU Engineering in 2014, she was on the faculty at Mississippi State and at Pennsylvania State University. Previously, Shontz was a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and a Minnesota Supercomputing Institute Research Scholar at the University of Minnesota. Shontz is the recipient of a 2011 NSF Presidential Early CAREER Award (NSF PECASE Award), and in 2021, she became the first woman to receive the International Meshing Roundtable Fellow Award.