Sharon L. Wood

Wood is the descendant of three generations of civil engineers, and began her interest in engineering at age eight when she visited a construction site with her father.[2][3][4] She graduated from the University of Virginia in 1982,[5][4] and has a Ph.D. in civil engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign,[5] which she earned with the support of a Tau Beta Pi fellowship.[4]

The University of Illinois hired her as a faculty member directly after she completed her doctorate,[4] and she remained there as a faculty member for ten years before moving to the University of Texas in 1996. She was named dean in 2014,[5] after a year as interim dean.[3][4]

She was the first woman at the university to chair the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering, and the first woman to become dean of engineering.[2][3] Her accomplishments as dean include significantly increasing the number of women both among the faculty of the school and in its students.[4]

She was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2013 "for design of reinforced concrete structures and associated seismic instrumentation for extreme loadings and environments".[6] She is also a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers, which gave her their Alfred Noble Prize in 1993[7] and their Outstanding Projects and Leaders (OPAL) Award in Education in 2018.[8]

The University of Virginia named Wood their distinguished alumna for 2018.[4] Hart Energy and their Oil and Gas Investor magazine gave Wood their Pinnacle Award in 2020.[9]