Engineers!
Dr. Sarah Vigmostad is the Interim Associate Dean (previously: Interim Associate Dean for DEI) and an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering in the College of Engineering at the University of Iowa, where she has been on the faculty since 2008.
As part of her role as Associate Dean, she focuses on building more inclusive and socially responsible engineering environments and expanding access to STEM through rural and K–12 engagement. She supports faculty in making their teaching more inclusive and recently led the Workforce Development and Diversity & Culture of Inclusion pillars for an NSF Engineering Research Center pre-proposal, where she developed strategies for rural outreach and hands-on STEM learning. In March 2025, she was one of the organizers of a national visioning event (ERVA) focused on engineering’s role in rural resilience, including rural education and workforce development. She is the faculty advisor for the campus SWE chapter, and she supports outreach activities including an annual SWE high school conference, invention competitions, and STEM weekends for Girl Scouts.
She has participated in NSF’s Game Changers Academy and the National Academy of Engineering’s Frontiers of Engineering Education symposium. She is a co-founder of a startup, SynderBio, and has received recognition from national and international pitch competitions, including Equalize 2020 and UC Berkeley’s SkyDeck Accelerator.
She earned her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Iowa.