Engineering Undergraduate Commencement

Dr. Maria Klawe became president of Harvey Mudd College in July 2006. Before joining Harvey Mudd College, she served as dean of engineering and a professor of computer science at Princeton University, and held several positions at the University of British Columbia, including dean of science, vice president of student and academic services, and head of computer science. She has also worked at IBM Research in California, the University of Toronto, and Oakland University. She received Ph.D. and B.Sc. degrees in mathematics from the University of Alberta.

 

Dr. Klawe has made significant research contributions in several areas of mathematics and computer science, including functional analysis, discrete mathematics, theoretical computer science, and the design and use of interactive-multimedia for mathematics education. Her current research interests include discrete mathematics, serious games and assistive technologies.

 

One of her lifelong passions is to increase the participation of women and other under-represented groups in science and engineering, especially in areas such as computer science where their participation has significantly declined over the past three decades. She was the first woman to serve on the Board of the Computing Research Association, and co-founded CRA-W, the highly successful Committee on the Status of Women. She has served on the Board of the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology since its inception and as chair from 2003-2008. From 1997-2002, she held the IBM-NSERC Chair for Women in Science and Engineering for British Columbia and the Yukon, and led several research studies and projects related to increasing the participation of women in computing.

 

Dr. Klawe joined the Microsoft Board in March 2009. She is a past president of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), a trustee of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute at Berkeley, and a member of the Board of Math for America. She is a Fellow of the ACM and the Canadian Information Processing Society, and the recipient of numerous awards, including the Computing Research Association's Nico Habermann Award. She is also a member of UC Irvine’s Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences Dean's Leadership Council. Dr. Klawe holds several honorary doctorate degrees in the areas of science and mathematics.