Susan C. Hagness received the B.S. degree with highest honors and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Northwestern University, Evanston, IL in 1993 and 1998, respectively. Since 1998, she has been with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she currently holds the title of Philip D. Reed Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Maria Stuchly Professor of Electrical Engineering and has been serving as the Chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering since 2018. She is also a faculty affiliate of the Department of Biomedical Engineering and a member of the UW Carbone Cancer Center. She served as Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Affairs in the College of Engineering at UW-Madison between 2014 and 2017. Prof. Hagness has held a variety of professional society and advisory board appointments and elected leadership roles within the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society (AP-S), the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, the U.S. National Committee (USNC) of the International Union of Radio Science (URSI), the ASEE Engineering Research Council, and the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Heads Association. She was selected as a Fellow in the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (now the Big Ten Academic Alliance) Academic Leadership Program in 2014-15 and as a Fellow in the Academy for Innovative Higher Education Leadership in 2025-26.
Prof. Hagness was the recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) presented by the White House in 2000. In 2002, she was named one of the 100 top young innovators in science and engineering in the world by the MIT Technology Review magazine. She is also the recipient of the UW-Madison Emil Steiger Distinguished Teaching Award (2003), the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society Early Career Achievement Award (2004), the URSI Issac Koga Gold Medal (2005), the IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering Outstanding Paper Award (2007), the IEEE Education Society Mac E. Van Valkenburg Early Career Teaching Award (2007), the UW System Alliant Energy Underkofler Excellence in Teaching Award (2009), the Physics in Medicine and Biology Citations Prize (2011), the Sven Berggren Prize from the Royal Physiographic Society of Lund, Sweden (2015), UW-Madison College of Engineering awards for teaching (2014), research (2018), and equity and diversity efforts (2021), Vice-Chancellor for Research honors including a Kellett Mid-Career award (2011) and a WARF Named Professorship (2024), and the 2026 USNC-URSI Impact Award. She is a Fellow of the IEEE, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), and the National Academy of Inventors (NAI). Her student mentees have received numerous research recognitions, including three first prize awards in URSI student paper competitions and multiple IEEE AP-S recognitions.