Suzanne Plummer ’89 has spent her career charting new territory—from transforming the technology behind modern computing to opening doors for women in engineering.
The George R. Brown School of Engineering and Computing and the Rice Engineering Alumni board have honored Plummer with the Outstanding Engineering Alumni Award for her contributions to the industry and to society.
First presented by the Rice Engineering Alumni to George R. Brown in 1974, this award has a long tradition of honoring Rice engineering alumni for outstanding professional achievement and service to humanity.
“Suzanne has made significant contributions to computing technology while helping create opportunities for the next generation of women engineers,” said Luay Nakhleh, William and Stephanie Sick Dean of Engineering and Computing. “Her technical leadership and commitment to mentorship reflect the kind of impact we hope Rice engineers will have, both in their fields and in the broader community.”
Plummer has spent the past two decades of her career at AMD, where she has risen to the level of Vice President of Engineering and Fellow and held multiple executive leadership roles. Currently serving as vice president of design engineering, she guides the development of all AMD’s CPUs.
Her contributions include leading the creation of the first Zen CPU, which transformed the company’s processor design approach and propelled AMD to new heights. The Zen program has evolved into a hybrid, multi-chip architecture that delivers high performance, scalability and efficiency across a broad range of desktop, server and mobile processors. She also led the teams that delivered all of AMD’s graphics System on a Chip (SOCs), worked in AMD Research and Development, and led the development of the CPU that powers the Xbox and PlayStation game consoles.
Alongside her technical leadership, Plummer has made empowering women in engineering a central part of her work.
For years, Plummer watched women struggle to build lasting careers in the industry. “It’s a broken rung on the ladder,” Plummer said. “Women entered engineering only to drop out after five to seven years. As a female engineer in semiconductors, you don’t have many female peers and you see very few female role models. Seeing so many young women leave engineering feels tragic. There aren’t enough women in engineering in the first place, and when women make it this far and choose to leave the workforce, something needs to be done differently.”
AMD agreed and created a position in which Plummer would drive retention and development of their female engineers. In this role, working with AMD’s Learning and Development team, she created a two-day seminar to coach women on career-building skill sets, everything from delivering technical presentations to filing patents. As vice president of technical diversity and development, she led classes, developed mentoring programs, and created a pipeline for women at every level of the company from junior engineers to Fellows.
“We focused on a mix of hard and soft skills that engineers don’t necessarily work on,” said Plummer. “The feedback was amazing and was the most fun I have had in any job.” She also added a single day seminar at AMD’s Fellow Forum conference for learning, networking and building community among the company’s top female technical leaders.
The sense of belonging Plummer has cultivated at AMD mirrors the community she found years earlier as an undergraduate studying electrical engineering at Rice. She remembers Rice as a place with a distinctive culture, one that showed her not only that she belonged in engineering but that she could thrive in it.
“Being part of the Rice community made me feel like engineering was a good fit,” said Plummer, who was often one of the few women in her courses. “The culture and opportunities at Rice prepared me for the hard work ahead and made me confident in my career choices.”
Rice also paved the way for a pivotal opportunity for Plummer: a summer internship in digital signal processing at Texas Instruments, which cemented her career path. Plummer credits Rice’s holistic approach to education for giving her the foundation and confidence to build a successful career.
“Rice has given me the solid background and broad experience beyond technical expertise that has brought me to where I am in my career,” said Plummer. “It is an honor to be among the alumni recognized as Outstanding Engineering Alumni.”
Plummer will be formally honored at the George R. Brown School of Engineering and Computing Alumni Awards Celebration on October 22, 2026.