Biography

Susan Kauzlarich received her BS degree from the College of William and Mary in 1980 and her PhD from Michigan State University in 1985. Following postdoctoral work with John Corbett at Iowa State University, she joined the faculty of the University of California-Davis in 1987, where she is currently a Distinguished Professor of Chemistry. She is a world-renowned expert on Zintl phases and the synthesis and characterization of nano-materials, with interests ranging from magnetic resonance imaging to thermoelectrics. Prof. Kauzlarich is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Chemical Society and a recipient of the 2013 Garvan-Olin Medal from the American Chemical Society and the Mayer Distinguished Scholar Award from Argonne National Laboratory. She has received a NASA Tech Brief Award for her work on new materials for thermoelectric power generation. She has published over 250 peer reviewed articles and several patents. She has been active in service to the profession: she currently serves as an Associate Editor for Chemistry of Materials and on the Editorial Advisory Board for the Handbook on the Physics and Chemistry of the Rare Earths. She recently served as the Vice-Chair/Chair of the Solid State Chemistry Gordon Research conference (2012-2014). She was the Faculty Assistant to the Dean of Mathematical and Physical Sciences and now is the Chair of Chemistry at UC Davis and an active member of the steering committees for the Women’s Research and Resource Center, Women in Science and Engineering, and on the Faculty Advisory Committee for the Center for the Advancement of Multicultural Perspectives on Science (CAMPOS). She has been recognized in many ways for her outstanding mentoring of students, including receiving from President Obama the 2008 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Math and Engineering Mentoring.