Mary Shaw

Timeline

1. 1943–1972

   Rice and a Carnegie Mellon PhD

   She is born in Washington, D.C. in 1943, earns a BA in mathematics at Rice University, and works in systems programming and research at the Research Analysis Corporation and at Rice. She joins the Carnegie Mellon faculty after earning her PhD in computer science there in 1972.

2. 1976–1981

   Alphard and data abstraction

   With William Wulf and Ralph London, she designs Alphard, a Pascal-like language for data abstraction and verification, and the three publish "An Introduction to the Construction and Verification of Alphard Programs" in December 1976. In 1981, she coauthors a book on software metrics with Alan Perlis and Frederick Sayward.

3. 1984–1990

   Chief scientist at the SEI

   She helps found Carnegie Mellon's Software Engineering Institute and serves as its chief scientist from 1984 to 1987. In 1990, she publishes "Prospects for an Engineering Discipline of Software" in IEEE Software, arguing that software engineering needs models, analysis techniques and design criteria.

4. 1990s

   A software architecture textbook

   In 1996, she and David Garlan publish Software Architecture: Perspectives on an Emerging Discipline. The citation for her 1996 election as an ACM Fellow names her software architecture work. From 1992 to 1999, she also serves as associate dean for professional education at Carnegie Mellon.

5. 2005–2011

   Stevens and SIGSOFT awards

   The Reengineering Forum gives her and David Garlan its Stevens Award and Citation in 2005. In 2011, they share the ACM SIGSOFT Outstanding Research Award for their work on software architecture.

6. 2014

   National Medal of Technology

   In October 2014, President Obama announces that he has selected her for the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. Carnegie Mellon credits her work on software architecture, the large-scale structure of software systems, with helping establish it as a recognized discipline.

7. 2024–2025

   AI and software engineering's future

   In 2024, she and Eunsuk Kang publish the essay "tl;dr: Chill, y'all: AI Will Not Devour SE" in Onward! Essays at SPLASH 2024. It holds that machine learning, large language models and generative AI offer new opportunities to extend the models and methods of software engineering and bring new kinds of components and architectures. In 2025, she is a panelist on "The Future of Software Engineering Beyond the Hype of AI" at ICSE 2025.

8. As of October 2026

   Perlis Professor at Carnegie Mellon

   She is the Alan J. Perlis University Professor of Computer Science in Carnegie Mellon's Software and Societal Systems Department, where her research focuses on software design, particularly software architecture and the design of systems created and used by real people. Her current major project is a book, There Must Be a Better Way, that collects and synthesizes decades of her essays, position papers and research results.