Final candidate for vice chancellor for research to present May 1
LAWRENCE — Belinda Sturm will be the final candidate for the vice chancellor for research position to share her vision and strategies for the future of research and discovery at the University of Kansas.
Her public presentation will take place 2:30-3:30 p.m. May 1 in the 1502 Building Auditorium. The event will also be livestreamed, and the passcode is 077414.
Sturm serves as KU’s interim vice chancellor for research and a professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental & Architectural Engineering.
Members of the KU community are encouraged to attend and provide feedback to the search committee. Presentation recordings and the online feedback form for all candidates will remain available on the search page through May 7.
Additional search information, including Sturm’s CV, is also available on the search page.
As well as leading KU’s Office of Research, Sturm serves as the director of the Kansas National Science Foundation’s Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). Through the KU Center for Research, she oversees the administration of research grants and contracts mainly for the Lawrence campus. Sturm also has oversight of activities related to technology commercialization and business and industry outreach.
Sturm serves on the boards of the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors and the EPSCoR /IDeA Foundation, is the chair of the Water Environment Federation’s Municipal Design Symposium and is a previous chair of the International Water Association’s U.S. National Committee executive board.
Sturm’s research focuses on the use of microbial communities in water reclamation and resource recovery from municipal wastewater. Her research group studies the application of biological processes in environmental engineering toward public health protection and sustainability.
In 2012, the American Academy of Environmental Engineers awarded Sturm an excellence in environmental engineering honor award for her research on coupling nutrient removal with algae-mediated energy recovery. In 2022, she won the Water Research Foundation’s Paul L. Busch Award to further research on aerobic granular sludge.
Sturm earned her doctorate in civil engineering and geological sciences from the University of Notre Dame and her bachelor’s degree in public health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.