Published on Waterloo's Daily Bulletin; this piece is based on an article that originally appeared on the Faculty of Engineering's news site.
A Waterloo Engineering professor has been elected to a two-year term as chair of the world's largest professional organization devoted to computer science.
Ladan Tahvildari, a professor of electrical and computer engineering, will lead the IEEE Technical Council on Software Engineering (TCSE), the voice of software engineering within the IEEE and the Computer Society, as it works to advance awareness, and support education and training through conferences, workshops and other professional activities.
She is the first woman, and only the second member from Canada, to chair the organization after holding numerous positions within the IEEE.
Tahvildari founded the Software Technologies Applied Research Laboratory at Waterloo in 2004 and has focused her research on software architecture, autonomic computing, security and software analysis/testing. The underlying theme of her research has been to devise techniques and tools that aid with the construction, analysis, and maintenance of large-scale software systems.
Prior to her election to the TCSE, Tahvildari had been active in several IEEE committees. She was an elected Member-at-Large (2016-2018) for the IEEE Technical Council of Software Engineering (TCSE), and the 2018 TCSE Awards Chair. She is currently a Member-at-Large of the IEEE Technical Activities Committee (TAC). She has been on the program and organizing committees of many international conferences. She was Publications Chair of ICSE’19 (Montreal), Co-Chair of ICSME ’17 Most Influential Paper Awards (Shanghai), the Publications Chair of ICSE ’09 (Vancouver), Workshops Co-Chair of ICSM ’08 (Beijing), Program Co-Chair of ICSM ’07 (Paris), Working Sessions/Tools Chair of ICPC ’06 (Athens), Workshop Chair of WCRE ’04 (Delft), and Publicity Chair of WCRE ’03 (Victoria). She also served as a guest co-editor for one of the past issues of the IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering.
Tahvildari has over 10 years of experience as Chair of the IEEE Women in Engineering (WIE) Affinity Group and served as Chair of the IEEE Computer Society (2004-2008), Kitchener-Waterloo Section in Eastern Canada. She has also received a variety of awards/distinctions recognizing her outreach accomplishments.