College of Engineering's Barbara G. Ryder named Hal G. J. Byron Maupin Professor

Barbara G. Ryder, professor and head of the Department of Computer Science in the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech, was named the J. Byron Maupin Professor by the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors during the board's quarterly meeting on Aug. 25.

The J. Byron Maupin Professorship was established by his widow Majorie S. Maupin and her brother, LeRoy M. Sizemore, in 1993 J. Byron Maupin, a native of Bedford, Va., was a 1934 industrial engineering graduate who spent his career with DuPont and Sprague Meter Company.

Ryder is the first woman to serve as a department head in the history of the nationally ranked College of Engineering. She received her Ph.D. degree in computer science at Rutgers in 1982. She previously worked in the 1970s at AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J. Ryder’s research focuses on static and dynamic program analyses to improve the software quality of industrial-strength object-oriented systems, for use in practical software tools.

Ryder became a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the premier computer science professional society, in 1998. She was selected as a Computing Research Association Committee on the Status of Women’s Distinguished Professor in 2004 and received the association’s Special Interest Group on Programming Languages (SIGPLAN) Distinguished Service Award in 2001. She also was voted Professor of the Year for Excellence in Teaching by the Rutgers Computer Science Graduate Student Society in 2003, received a Leader in Diversity Award at Rutgers in 2006, and a Graduate Teaching Award from Rutgers Graduate School in 2007.

Ryder has been an active leader in the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM Council Member 2000-2008; Chair, Federated Computing Research Conference 2003; Chair, ACM SIGPLAN 1995-1997). She has served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Computer Research Association (1998-2001). She is an editorial board member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ Transactions on Software Engineering, and Software, Practice and Experience.

Ryder has also served on many program and conference committees, especially those sponsored by ACM SIGPLAN and the association’s Special Interest Group on Software Engineering. She has been a panelist in the CRA Workshops on Academic Careers for Women, and the New Software Engineering Faculty Symposia held at the International Conference on Software Engineering.

She received her bachelor’s degree from Brown University and a master’s degree from Stanford University.