Mary Lou Soffa
Department Chair and
Owen. R. Cheatham Professor of Computer Science
University of Virginia

Mary Lou Soffa is the Owen T. Cheatham Professor and Chair of the Computer Science Department at the University of Virginia.  From 1977 to 2004, she was a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Pittsburgh and served as Dean of Graduate Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences from 1991 to 1996.

She received the Nico Habermann Award in 2006 for outstanding contributions toward increasing the numbers and successes of underrepresented members in the computing research community. In 1999, she received the Whitehouse’s Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring. She was elected an ACM Fellow in 1999 and selected as a Girl Scout Woman of Distinction in 2003. She served for ten years on the Board of the Computing Research Association (CRA) and currently is a member of CRA-W, the committee on the status of women in computer science and engineering of the Computing Research Association.  She has served on the Executive Committees of both ACM SIGSOFT and SIGPLAN as well as conference chair, program chair or program committee member of many conferences. Her research interests include compilers, optimizations, software engineering, program analysis, and software tools for debugging and testing programs.