Barbara H. Liskov
August 2009
Institute Professor
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
32 Vassar St., Room 32-G942
Cambridge, MA 02139
617-253-5886 (Phone)
617-253-8460 (Fax)
liskov@csail.mit.edu
Education
University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA
, Department of Mathematics, Bachelor of
Arts, June 1961.
Stanford University, Stanford, CA
, Department of Computer Science, Master of Science, June 1965,
Doctor of Philosophy, August 1968, Dissertation: ”A Program to Play Chess Endgames.”
Research Interests
Programming methodology, distributed computing, programming languages, operating systems.
Professional Experience
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and
Computer Science. Institute Professor, 2008 - , Ford Professor of Engineering, 1997-2008, Associate
Head for Computer Science, 2001-2004, NEC Professor of Software Science and Engineering, 1986-
1997, Assistant Professor, 1972-1976, Associate Professor, 1976-1980, Professor, 1980-Present, Associate
Provost for Faculty Equity, 2007-Present.
The Mitre Corporation, Bedford, MA
, Member of Technical Staff, Computer Science Research and
Development, 1968-1972.
Stanford University, Stanford, CA
, Graduate Research Assistant in Artificial Intelligence, 1963-
1968.
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
, Programmer, Language Translation Project, 1962 - 1963.
The Mitre Corporation, Bedford, MA
, Applications Programmer, 1961 - 1962.
Awards
2008 Turing Award
2007 ACM SIGSOFT Impact Paper Award for “Abstraction Mechanisms in CLU”
2007 ACM SIGPLAN Programming Languages Lifetime Achievement Award
2005 Honorary Doctorate, ETH Zurich
IEEE 2004 John von Neumann Medal
Society of Women Engineers 1996 Achievement Award
Member National Academy of Engineering
Member American Academy of the Arts and Science
Fellow of the ACM
Named one of 50 most important women in science by Discover Magazine in 2003
Named one of top 100 women in Computing by Open Computing Magazine in 1996
Professional Activities
Professor Liskov is a fellow and member of the Association for Computing Machinery, a member of the
IEEE, and also is a member of the ACM Special Interest Groups on Programming Languages, Operating
Systems, and Databases, and has served on the executive committee of the ACM Special Interest Group
on Programming Languages, and on the IEEE Technical Committees on Operating Systems and on
Software Engineering. Prof. Liskov has served as chair and as a member of numerous program committees
and as an associate editor for ACM, Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems. She has
also served on numerous advisory committees, including the Computer Science and Telecommunications
Board of the National Research Council, and the Computer and Information Science and Engineering
Advisory Committee for the NSF.
Consulting Experience
Prof. Liskov has acted as a consultant for numerous companies on computer related issues including
Bolt, Beranek, and Newman, Cadence, Digital Equipment Corporation, Hewlett-Packard, Intermetrics,
NCR, and Prime Computer.
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Books
1. CLU Reference Manual. Springer-Verlag, 1984 with R. Atkinson, T. Bloom, E. Moss, J. C. Schaffert,
R. Scheifler, and A. Snyder. Also published as Lecture Notes in Computer Science 114, G. Goos and
J. Hartmanis, Eds., Springer-Verlag, 1981.
2. Abstraction and Specification in Program Development. MIT Press and McGraw Hill, 1986, with J.
Guttag.
3. Program Development in Java: Abstraction, Specification, and Object-Oriented Design. Addison-
Wesley, 2001, with J. Guttag.
Publications
1. The Design of the Venus Operating System. Comm. of the ACM 15, 3 (March 1972). Also published
in Software Systems Principles: A Survey, P. Freeman, SRA Associates, Inc., Chicago 1975, 542-553.
2. Design Methodology for Reliable Software Systems. Proc. of the Fall Joint Computer Conference 41,
Part 1, December 1972. Also published in Tutorial on Software Design Techniques, P. Freeman and A.
Wasserman, IEEE, 1977, 53-61.
3. SPIL: A Language for Construction of Reliable System Software. SIGPLAN Notices 8, 9 (September
1973) (with L. Smith).
4. Report on ACM SIGPLAN-SIGOPS Interface Meeting, Structured Programming Session. SIGPLAN
Notices 8, 9 (September 1973).
5. Programming With Abstract Data Types. Proc. of the ACM Conference on Very High Level Languages,
SIGPLAN Notices 9, 4 (April 1974), 50-59 (with S. Zilles).
6. Specification Techniques for Data Abstractions. IEEE Trans. on Software Engineering SE-1, 1 (March
1975). Also published in Proc. of the First International Conference on Software Reliability, April 1975,
72-88. Also published in Tutorial on Software Design Techniques, P. Freeman and A. Wasserman, IEEE,
1977, 114-126 (with S. Zilles).
7. Data Types and Program Correctness. AFIPS Conference Proceedings 44, 1975 National Computer
Conference, 285-286.
8. An Introduction to Formal Specifications of Data Abstractions. Current Trends in Programming
Methodology 1 (R. Yeh, Ed.), Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, January 1977, 1-32 (with S. Zilles).
9. Introduction to CLU. New Directions in Algorithmic Languages - 1975 (S. A. Schuman, Ed.), IRIA,
May 1976.
10. A Language Extension for Controlling Access to Shared Data. IEEE Trans. on Software Engineering
SE-2, 4 (December 1976), 277-285 (with A. K. Jones).
11. Abstraction Mechanisms in CLU. Comm. of the ACM 20, 8 (August 1977), 564-576 (with A. Snyder,
R. Atkinson and C. Schaffert).
12. A Language Extension for Expressing Constraints on Data Access. Comm. of the ACM 21, 5 (May
1978), 358-367 (with A. K. Jones).
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