Hagness receives WARF Named Professorship

Susan Hagness, the Philip Dunham Reed Professor and chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is one of eight faculty at the university selected to receive a 2024-2025 Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) Named Professorship.

The professorship honors faculty who have made major contributions to the advancement of knowledge, primarily through their research endeavors, but also as a result of their teaching and service activities.

The award includes $100,000 and invites recipients to choose the name associated with their professorship. Hagness has chosen to honor the late Maria Stuchly, a collaborator and distinguished researcher in the interaction of electromagnetic fields with the human body, medical applications and the design of wireless-communication antennas. Stuchly also held many leadership positions in the field, serving as a pioneer, role model and mentor for women in engineering.

Hagness’s research primarily focuses on electromagnetic interactions with tissue for medical applications. Her work spans applied research involving diagnostic and therapeutic technology development as well as basic research, such as the dielectric properties of breast tissue at microwave frequencies, that establishes the physical basis for those technologies. Her group has developed non-ionizing sensing and imaging techniques and tools as well as new techniques for non-invasive microwave hyperthermia and minimally invasive ablation of tumors. Most recently she has expanded her work into electric-pulse delivery to enhance gene therapy.

Besides chairing the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Hagness has also served as Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Affairs in the College of Engineering, is a faculty affiliate of the Department of Biomedical Engineering and a member of the Imaging and Radiation Sciences program at the UW-Madison Carbone Cancer Center.

She is a fellow of IEEE, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Academy of Inventors, and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, among many awards and honors during her career. She has held a variety of appointed and elected leadership roles within professional societies and advisory boards, including the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society, the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, the U.S. National Committee of the International Union of Radio Science and the ASEE Engineering Research Council.

More information and a list of other recipients is available here.