JoAnn Browning

"Engineering excellence shapes better futures for people and communities."

JoAnn Browning completed her Civil Engineering PhD in Structures at Purdue University in 1998 under the mentorship of Distinguished Professor Mete Sozen and began her academic career at the University of Kansas that same year.

In 2000, she married Adolfo Matamoros whom she met at Purdue. They would welcome in children, Maria and John, before JoAnn earned her tenure in 2004, and then Benjamin and Ann before she was promoted to professor in 2010. JoAnn concluded her 16 years at Kansas by serving two years as Associate Dean of Administration and was named Dean and David and Jennifer Distinguished Chair of Engineering at the University of Texas at San Antonio in 2014.

As Dean at UTSA, JoAnn led the development of robust research and academic programs, including initiating a new Bachelor program in Chemical Engineering and two new PhD programs in Civil and Chemical Engineering.

She founded a Student Success Center to increase retention and graduation rates, brought two colleges together to form a new, unified college, and through the philanthropy of dedicated San Antonians Margie and Bill Klesse, facilitated the naming of the college as the Klesse College of Engineering and Integrated Design in 2022. In 2022 UTSA was named a Carnegie R1 Institution and in June 2023 JoAnn was named Interim Vice President of Research at UTSA.

JoAnn is a registered Professional Engineer in Kansas and Texas, serves on the American Concrete Institute Reinforced Concrete Building Code Committee, is Vice Chair of the Board of Directors for the Building Seismic Safety Council, and is Co-PI on the Purdue-led Network Coordination Office for the National Science Foundation Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure. Her own research interests include structural engineering, earthquake engineering, engineering materials, reinforced concrete design and analysis, and engineering education.