Shawn Blanton is the interim Vice Provost for Diversity, Equity and

Inclusion. In this interim role he focusses on diversifying the graduate student and faculty populations across the university, along with enhancing and initiating win-win relationships with the Pittsburgh region. Dr. Blanton is also the Trustee Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department where he serves as the Associate Head of Research responsible for developing and executing research strategies. His personal research interests include various aspects of integrated system testing and diagnosis, and the development of design methodologies and tools for securing hardware systems. He has consulted for various companies, and is the founder of TestWorks, a Carnegie Mellon University spinout focused on information extraction from IC test data.

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He received a Career Award from the National Science Foundation in 1997, and IBM Faculty Partnership Awards in 2005 and 2006. He has given over one-hundred talks at many universities and companies that include Stanford, Yale, Texas A&M, Duke, Purdue,

Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, IBM, Delphi, Hewlett Packard, CISCO, Texas Instruments, Analog Devices, Freescale, Motorola and Nvidia. He has served on various technical program committees that include the IEEE/ACM Design Automation Conference, IEEE VLSI Test Symposium, IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer-Aided Design, the International Test Conference, and an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on CAD. He has published over 200 refereed conference and journal papers and has 11 U.S. patents or patent applications filed. He is a fellow of the IEEE and senior member of the ACM and served as the Program Chair for the 2011 International Test Conference.

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Blanton is also significantly involved in the recruitment of

underrepresented candidates for graduate school. Most of his activities center on direct recruitment at the annual conventions of various engineering societies that include the National Society of Black Engineers, Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers and the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, and he spearheaded the University's efforts for the 2006, 2012 and 2018 NSBE conventions held here in Pittsburgh. Blanton also serves as the GEM representative for Carnegie Mellon, where he helped develop the university’s current GEM program which has resulted in the matriculation of more GEM fellows for the last two years than any other university. In 2006, Blanton was awarded an Emerald Award for outstanding leadership in recruiting and mentoring minorities for advanced degrees in science and

technology.