Dr. Susan F. Heller-Zeisler is currently serving as an International Affairs Officer in the Office of International and Academic Affairs (OIAA), her "second life" at NIST. Originally from California, she received her B.A. degree from San Jose State University in May 1980, with a major in Biological Sciences and minor in Chemistry. After moving to the East Coast, she worked for nine years in the 1980's in what is now in the Chemistry Science and Technology Laboratory. Her area of expertise was nuclear analytical chemistry, in the elemental and speciation analysis of biological and environmental samples. She received her Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from the University of Maryland, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, in 1989, which she attained while working concurrently at NIST. Her research was on the elemental determination of proteins by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and neutron activation analysis. In 1990, she was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellowship, and worked at the Hahn-Meitner Institute in Berlin on separation and identification methods for selenoproteins.

Following the completion of her postdoctoral work, Dr. Zeisler worked for three years at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria in the Section of Nutritional and Health-related Environmental Studies. After her return to the U.S., she served as laboratory manager for the Atmospheric Chemistry Group at the University of Maryland, College Park. She also taught in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry for several semesters, including beginning inorganic and analytical chemistry.

Her current duties in the Office of International and Academic Affairs include the administration of the U.S. – Egypt S&T Joint Board program, and coordinating NIST activities with India, Pakistan, Korea, Vietnam, Finland and Russia and the Gulf Council Countries. She assists in the administration of the National Research Council Postdoctoral Associateships Programs, and also keeps an update of general NIST international activities.