President & CEO, SCRA
Larry Druffel is the president and CEO of SCRA, a public, non-profit research and development corporation engaged in applying advanced technology to increase industrial competitiveness. He is chairman of the Board of the Advanced Technology Institute and member of the Board of Teknowledge Corporation.
He was the director of the Software Engineering Institute from 1986-1996. Before joining the SEI he was vice president for business development at Rational Software. He served on the Board of Directors of Rational from 1986-1995.
Druffel was on the faculty at the USAF Academy. He managed research programs in advanced software technology at DARPA, then served as director of Computer Systems and Software (Research and Advanced Technology) in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
He is the co-author of a computer science textbook and over 35 professional papers. He has a BS in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois, an MSc in computer science from the University of London, and a Ph.D. in computer science from Vanderbilt University.
Druffel is a fellow of the IEEE, and a fellow of the ACM. He is on the Board of the Oak Ridge Associated Universities. He serves on Engineering Advisory Boards of the University of South Carolina, Clemson and Embry Riddle University.
He chaired the AF Science Advisory Board Study on Information Architecture and co-chaired the Defense Science Board study on Acquiring Defense Software Commercially. He led the Defensive Information Warfare Panel for the AFSAB "New World Vistas". He has served on numerous AFSAB, DSB, and National Research Council studies dealing with the use of information technology for defense.
He currently serves on the National Research Council study of Engineering Challenges to the Long Term Operation of the Space Station and on the NSA Science Advisory Board study on cryptoanalysis.
The SEI as catalyst for change
The Software Engineering Institute was established in 1983 to assist the Department of Defense and its contractors in improving the state of practice of software engineering. CMU recognized that commercial industry would soon drive the direction of future software and quickly broadened the charter to embrace a national agenda. Since that time, the software engineering landscape has changed significantly. Some of the change is directly attributable to the SEI. Some of it occurred independently. This talk will set the technical context that lead to the creation of the SEI, highlight some of the progress made in the software engineering community in the ensuing period, and point to some changes on the horizon.