Jeannette Marie Wing is Avanessians Director of the Data Science Institute at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

, where she is also a professor of

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

. Until June 30, 2017, she was Corporate Vice President of

Microsoft Research Microsoft Research (MSR) is the research subsidiary of Microsoft. It was created in 1991 by Richard Rashid, Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold with the intent to advance state-of-the-art computing and solve difficult world problems through technologi ...

with oversight of its core research laboratories around the world and Microsoft Research Connections. Prior to 2013, she was the President's Professor of Computer Science at

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. She also served as assistant director for Computer and Information Science and Engineering at the

NSF NSF may stand for: Political organizations *National Socialist Front, a Swedish National Socialist party *NS-Frauenschaft, the women's wing of the former German Nazi party *National Students Federation, a leftist Pakistani students' political gr ...

from 2007 to 2010. She was appointed the Columbia University executive vice president for research in 2021.

Background

Wing earned her S.B. and S.M. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

in June 1979. Her advisers were

Ronald Rivest Ronald Linn Rivest (; born May 6, 1947) is a cryptographer and an Institute Professor at MIT. He is a member of MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and a member of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Int ...

and John Reiser. In 1983, she earned her Ph.D. in Computer Science at MIT under

John Guttag John Vogel Guttag (born March 6, 1949) is an American computer scientist, professor, and former head of the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. Education and career John Guttag was raised in Larchmont, New York, th ...

. She is a fourth-degree black belt in

Tang Soo Do Tang Soo Do (Hangul: 당수도, Hanja: 唐手道 ) refers to a Korean martial art based on Karate and may include fighting principles from subak (as described in the Kwon Bup Chong Do), as well as northern Chinese martial arts. Before the Ni ...

Career and research

Wing was on the faculty of the

University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in C ...

from 1982 to 1985 and then the faculty of Carnegie Mellon from 1985 to 2012. She served as the head of the Computer Science Department from 2004 to 2007 and from 2010 to 2012. In January 2013, she took a leave from Carnegie Mellon to work at Microsoft Research. Wing has been a leading member of the

formal methods In computer science, formal methods are mathematically rigorous techniques for the specification, development, and verification of software and hardware systems. The use of formal methods for software and hardware design is motivated by the expec ...

community, especially in the area of

Larch Larches are deciduous conifers in the genus ''Larix'', of the family Pinaceae (subfamily Laricoideae). Growing from tall, they are native to much of the cooler temperate northern hemisphere, on lowlands in the north and high on mountains furt ...

. She has led many research projects and has published widely. With

Barbara Liskov Barbara Liskov (born November 7, 1939 as Barbara Jane Huberman) is an American computer scientist who has made pioneering contributions to programming languages and distributed computing. Her notable work includes the development of the Liskov ...

, she developed the

Liskov substitution principle The Liskov substitution principle (LSP) is a particular definition of a subtyping relation, called strong behavioral subtyping, that was initially introduced by Barbara Liskov in a 1988 conference keynote address titled ''Data abstraction and h ...

, published in 1993. She has also been a strong promoter of

computational thinking Computational thinking (CT) is the mental skill to apply concepts, methods, problem solving techniques, and logic reasoning, derived from computing and computer science, to solve problems in all areas, including our daily lives. In education, CT ...

, expressing the algorithmic problem-solving and abstraction techniques used by computer scientists and how they might be applied in other disciplines. She is a member of the editorial board of the following journals: *'' Foundations and Trends in Privacy and Security'' *''

Journal of the ACM The ''Journal of the ACM'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering computer science in general, especially theoretical aspects. It is an official journal of the Association for Computing Machinery. Its current editor-in-chief is Venkatesan ...

'' *''

Formal Aspects of Computing ''Formal Aspects of Computing'' (''FAOC'') is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Springer Science+Business Media, covering the area of formal methods and associated topics in computer science. The editors-in-chief are Jim Woodcock an ...

'' *''Formal Methods in System Design'' *''

International Journal of Software and Informatics The ''International Journal of Software and Informatics'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed scientific journal of computer science. It was started by the Institute of Software of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It covers the following topics: Artificia ...

'' *''Journal of Information Science and Engineering'' *''Software Tools for Technology Transfer''

Recognition

Wing was named a

Fellow of the IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operation ...

in 2003, "for contributions to methods for software systems".

References

External links

* Aaronson, Lauren
Q&A With: Jeannette Wing

American computer scientists Formal methods people Living people American women computer scientists Academic journal editors Carnegie Mellon University faculty Columbia University faculty Microsoft employees MIT School of Engineering alumni 20th-century American engineers 21st-century American engineers 20th-century American scientists 21st-century American scientists 20th-century American women scientists 21st-century American women scientists Fellow Members of the IEEE American academics of Chinese descent 1956 births {{US-academic-scientist-stub