Highest Faculty Distinction at Carnegie Mellon

Mary Shaw, the Alan J. Perlis Professor of Computer Science, is one of four Carnegie Mellon University professors this year awarded the elite distinction of University Professor, the highest academic accolade CMU faculty members can attain.

The others are Lorenz (Larry) T. Biegler, the Bayer Professor of Chemical Engineering;  John P. Lehoczky, dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences; and George Loewenstein, the Herbert A. Simon Professor of Economics and Psychology.

"Professors Biegler, Lehoczky, Loewenstein and Shaw are pre-eminent researchers and educators who are highly regarded leaders in their respective fields. They join a most distinguished group of peers who represent much of the intellectual leadership at Carnegie Mellon. They are very deserving of this honor and we are very fortunate to have them as part of our university community," said CMU Provost and Executive Vice President Mark Kamlet.

Shaw, a computer science faculty member since 1972, is a leader in software engineering research whose work on software architecture — the large-scale structure of software systems — helped establish it as a recognized discipline. Selecting an appropriate architecture is now recognized as a critical step in the engineering of complex software systems for everything from the anti-lock braking systems in cars to the international banking system.

She also is an educational innovator who has developed computer science curricula from the introductory to the doctoral level, including graduate programs targeted at software professionals.

"Mary Shaw has played many important and unique roles at Carnegie Mellon," said Randal E. Bryant, dean of the School of Computer Science. "As one of the first Ph.D. graduates in computer science at CMU, and as one of our longest-serving faculty members, she has made important contributions to our educational and research mission. Especially significant are her efforts to create a strong foundation for software engineering education and in identifying the overall organization of a software system — its 'architecture'— as a key element in its design."

Shaw, who earned her Ph.D. in 1972, is a faculty member in the Institute for Software Research, the Computer Science Department and the Human-Computer Interaction Institute. During her tenure, she has served as chief scientist of Carnegie Mellon's Software Engineering Institute and as associate dean for professional education. She is a co-recipient, with CMU colleague David Garlan, of the 2011 Outstanding Research Award from the Association for Computing Machinery's (ACM) Special Interest Group on Software Engineering for contributions to software architecture.

Last year, she was the first recipient of the Distinguished Educator Award presented by the IEEE Computer Society's Technical Council on Software Engineering, and the first recipient of the Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training's Nancy Mead Award for Excellence in Software Engineering Education. She is a fellow of the ACM, the IEEE and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She is a past member of the National Research Council's Computer Science and Telecommunications Board and the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency's Information Science and Technology Board. 

To view CMU's press release on all four of the new University Professors, go to http://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2011/July/july14_universityprofessors.shtml