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Belinda Sturm

The current interim leader of the University of Kansas’ research enterprise has been announced as a finalist for KU’s vice chancellor of research position.

Belinda Sturm, a KU engineering professor and director of a key National Science Foundation program at the university, will give a public presentation at 2:30 p.m. Wednesday at the 1502 Building on the KU campus at 15th and Iowa streets.

Sturm has been serving as the interim vice chancellor of research at KU since late last year when Simon Atkinson left the KU position to fill a similar role at the University of California, Davis.

The vice chancellor position is responsible for overseeing all KU research enterprises, and is tasked with helping grow KU’s overall research portfolio, which currently generates more than $200 million in grants and other funding.

Sturm also serves as the director of the Kansas National Science Foundation’s Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research, which is based at KU. The NSF program is designed to increase the amount of scientific research grants that researchers in Kansas receive each year. The program has helped secure more than $70 million in research grants in a variety of programs since 2017, according to data on its webpage.

As a researcher, Sturm, an environmental engineer, focuses on how to effectively reclaim water from municipal wastewater systems. She’s active in several national water programs, and is the chair of a national symposium focused on the design of city water and wastewater plants.

Sturm has a doctorate in civil engineering and geological sciences from Notre Dame and an undergraduate degree in public health from the University of North Carolina.

Sturm is the last of four finalists for the vice chancellor position to be announced. However, only three candidates remain under consideration. KU announced that Kevin Gardner, the past vice president for research and innovation at the University of Louisville, has withdrawn from the search for personal reasons.

The other candidates for the position are Marc Mendonca, director of research development at Indiana University, and Shelley Hooks, an associate vice president for research at the University of Georgia.