Vanderbilt University has found its next vice provost for research and innovation in Susan Margulies, a former assistant director of the US National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Engineering.
She will take on her new role on 1 June, reporting to provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs C. Cybele Raver. She will also become a professor of biomedical engineering in the School of Engineering.
She has been tasked with outlining and implementing a vision for the next generation of growth in Vanderbilt’s research enterprise, championing sponsored research and accelerating the process of discovery, from concept to funding to implementation and commercialisation.
Margulies has been a professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering — jointly housed within Emory University and Georgia Tech — since August 2017.
Margulies worked for NSF from August 2021 to August 2025, overseeing an annual budget of nearly $800 million and a team of more than 150.
For the majority of her earlier career, she was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania for more than 24 years.
“I am inspired by Vanderbilt’s vision to realise its motto ‘dare to grow’ by increasing research and scholarship across disciplines and career stages, and I am drawn to the campus culture of radical collaboration.
“As vice provost, my focus will be on strengthening the systems, partnerships and catalysts that allow faculty and teams to pursue bold ideas and move them efficiently from concept to funding to implementation to impact.”
Susan Margulies
Vanderbilt’s Office of the Vice Provost for Research and Innovation was created in 2016 and today counts more than 200 staff who support more than $1 billion in annual R&D expenditure.
Padma Raghavan had been the vice provost for research and innovation at Vanderbilt since 2016. Last summer, Raghavan became the institution’s inaugural executive director for science and technology strategy.
