Susan Hackwood, PhD
Professor of the Graduate Division
Senior Policy Fellow School of Public Policy
Director of the Science to Policy Initiative at the University of California Riverside
Dr. Hackwood's career has spanned industry, academia and government. Her core expertise is in robotics and she has collaborated with many researchers in Japan. In 1990, she was the founding Dean of the Bourns College of Engineering at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) where she was the first woman dean of engineering at a research university in the United States of America. In 2018, Dr. Hackwood returned to the UCR campus after serving for 23 years as Executive Director of the California Council on Science and Technology (CCST).
In 2010, Dr. Hackwood created the CCST Science Fellows program which selects, trains, and places recent PhD graduates to serve for one year in the California State government. Over 140 graduates have been placed and have had direct impacts on over 1,000 bills, briefings, hearings, and bill analyses. As the CCST Director she coordinated the efforts of scientists, social scientists, and engineers from academic institutions, NASA, and DOE laboratories to assist California’s state government in all aspects of policy that had a scientific or technical component. Dr. Hackwood oversaw the production of reports, briefings, and findings on energy, water, social impact of technology in society, kindergarten through graduate education, health, and climate change and resilience.
In 2018, Dr. Hackwood and the Science to Policy (S2P) student cabinet introduced the S2P Certificate course, which is an intense deep dive into the world of policy making. Dr. Hackwood’s experience, knowledge of science policy, and networking capacity are at the core of the UCR Science to Policy initiative that she directs. The S2P program includes communicating and networking with local, state, and federal policy entities. To date, over 100 PhD students at UCR have participated in S2P training and programs to learn and work at the interface of science and policy.