Diane Souvaine, vice provost for research at Tufts University, has been elected vice chair of the National Science Board (NSB), the governing body of the National Science Foundation (NSF). The NSB establishes NSF policies and serves as advisor to the president and Congress on policies related to science and engineering and education in science and engineering.

Souvaine was appointed to NSB by president Obama in 2008 and reappointed to a second six-year term in 2104. She has chaired the committees on strategy and budget, and programs and plans; co-chaired the task force on mid-scale research; and was a member of the committee on audit and oversight. Souvaine was also a founder and director of the NSF Science and Technology Center on Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science.

A theoretical computer scientist, Souvaine’s research in computational geometry has commercial applications in materials engineering, microchip design, robotics and computer graphics. She joined the faculty in the Departments of Computer Science and Mathematics at Tufts 1998, after twelve years at Rutgers. She received her A.B. in English and mathematics from Radcliffe College-Harvard in 1975 and a graduate degree in mathematical sciences from Dartmouth College. She continued her education at Princeton, earning an MSE in electrical engineering and computer science in 1984 and a Ph.D. in computer science in 1986.