Barbara Ryder, professor of computer science in the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech, has been conferred the title of professor emerita by the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors.

The emerita title may be conferred on retired professors, associate professors, and administrative officers who are specially recommended to the board by Virginia Tech President Tim Sands. Nominated individuals who are approved by the board receive an emeritus certificate from the university.

A member of the university community since 2008, Ryder served as head of the Department of Computer Science from 2008 until 2015. During that time, the number of undergraduate computer science degrees and majors doubled, and computer science research expenditures per tenure-track faculty member nearly tripled.

Ryder made significant contributions in teaching and research in her eight years at Virginia Tech. She had 23 research publications, including 12 in highly selective conferences and journals. She graduated one Ph.D. student, mentored three postdoctoral researchers and nine undergraduate researchers, and served on six additional Ph.D. dissertation committees.

She held the J. Byron Maupin Professorship of Engineering from 2008 until 2016, has been an Association for Computing Machinery Fellow since 1998, and is widely recognized internationally as a research expert on inter-procedural program analysis.

Ryder was honored with the 2014 Woman of Achievement Award from the Virginia Chapter of the American Association of University Women, the 2015 Association for Computing Machinery SIGSOFT Influential Educator Award, the 2008 ACM Presidential Award, and was elected to a three-year term as a member of the board of directors of the Computing Research Association in 2014. In October of this year, Ryder was recognized by her alma mater and presented with the Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Alumni Award during Rutgers University's Department of Computer Science 50-year anniversary celebration.

She also led a Department of Computer Science team that won second place nationally in the 2016 National Center for Women in Information Technology Extension Services Transformation Awards competition for achievements in undergraduate student gender diversity.

Ryder served as co-chair of the University Committee on Computational and Quantitative Thinking from 2013 until 2014, as chair of the College of Engineering High-Performance Computing Infrastructure Committee, as elected representative of the College of Engineering to the Department Heads’ Council Executive Committee, as a panelist at several College of Engineering promotion workshops, and as a member of several department head/director search committees.

She received her bachelor's degree in applied mathematics from Brown University, a master's degree in computer science from Stanford University, and a Ph.D. in computer science from Rutgers University.

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