In 2020, Su was appointed as Head of the Intelligent and Sustainable infrastructure Group at  Queen’s University Belfast (ISIG) and, a year later, additionally as the Director of Internationalisation for the School of Natural and Built Environment. She was the first woman to be awarded a Professorship in QUB Civil Engineering since the formation of the University in 1845.

Prior to this, from 2016 to 2020, Su was the Dean of Research for the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences where she successfully led the research agenda for a large and diverse faculty and embedded sustainability and people at the core of the research agenda. She led the Faculty in ensuring that the highest principles of research were embedded in our strategy, policy, processes, systems and functions, and that the governance and support structures continued to create an environment for world class research which has put the majority of EPS disciplines in the top 200 globally.

In her own research, she has led UKRI, European, USA-Ireland and Industry partnered projects in the area of SHM towards net zero and sustainable structural materials towards intelligent civil engineering infrastructure and net carbon solutions. Su became a Chartered Engineer in 1995, she was made a Fellow of Institution of Structural Engineers in 2024 and a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers Ireland in 2019. She was elected Vice-President for two terms with  the global Society for Civil Structural Health Monitoring (formerly known as ISHMII).

Professor Taylor leads research in structural health monitoring (SHM) and novel structural  materials for intelligent and sustainable infrastructure. She has supervised 25 successful PhDs in structural engineering and is currently supervising 6 PhD students. She has published over 250 papers in top international journals and peer reviewed international conference proceedings.  She has delivered several plenary/keynote papers at prestigious international conference. Most recently at BEI-2025 (https://beibridge.org/BEI2025.html ), the official annual conference of the International Bridge Engineering Institute. She led research resulting in the world’s first  basalt FRP RC bridge deck slab, the world’s first full fibre optic bridge weigh-in-motion system and led the ‘intelligent infrastructure’ work-package of a £4.5M EPSRC funded research project Towards Net Zero Public Transport which developed drive-by monitoring systems using a range of sensors. She recently led a Carbon Trust funded project developing low energy basalt fibre RC for the pre-cast concrete industry. Su is passionate about the impact of research, particularly in promoting a Net Zero future and was awarded Academic Ambassador for KTP. She is also a founder Director a QUB spin-out company, Sengenia Ltd.

Professor Taylor was the interim lead for Civil Engineering in 2024/25. She has significant experience in higher education  and has supervised UG designs teams and MEng projects which have won top inter/national prizes. For over a decade, she was  the Programme Director for the MEng in Structural Engineering with Architecture which has seen the successful collaboration across disciplines.