¹⁹⁹⁷Anita Jones

University Professor at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia

Professor Jones is the first computer scientist (and the first woman) to ever hold that prestigious position. Professor Jones has always been concerned with the health of science and engineering research in the United States, and as DDR&E she has created a legacy of tremendous positive impact with respect to improving the national infrastructure necessary to perform that research.

Anita Jones received a B.A. in Mathematics from Rice University, an M.A. in English Literature from the University of Texas, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie-Mellon University in 1973. She was an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie-Mellon until 1978, when she was promoted to Associate Professor. During 1981-87 she was co-founder and vice-president of Tartan Laboratories, a successful software company. Professor Jones has devoted a total of 15 years of combined service on the Air Force Science Advisory Board, and the Defense Science Board, the latter being the most senior of the external advisory bodies to the U.S. Department of Defense.

In 1988 Professor Jones came to the University of Virginia as Professor and Chair of the Department of Computer Science. Her vision, leadership, and superb mentoring of junior faculty were instrumental in forging a top-notch computer science research program at Virginia. In 1994 Professor Jones was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, and in 1996 she was named IEEE Fellow. Anita Jones’ technical interests focus on the design and construction of programmed systems. She has designed protection mechanisms and built secure systems which afford guarantees about how information is used. She has designed and built multiple processor operating systems in order to experiment with both the underlying machine architectures and the top-level applications. She implemented realistic and substantial systems to test out design and implementation hypotheses so as to ensure both functionally and cost-effectiveness. She is author or co-author of 37 scientific papers and the editor of two books.