Degree: Ph.D.
Mary Lou Maher, Ph.D., most recently a Senior Research Scientist in the iSchool at the University of Maryland and Honorary Professor of Design Computing in the Design Lab at the University of Sydney, is joining the College of Computing and Informatics as the Chair of the Department of Software and Information Systems. Mary Lou completed a BSc at Columbia University in 1979, and a MS and Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon University, completing the Ph.D. in 1984. As the Professor of Design Computing at the University of Sydney she was co-Director of the Key Centre of Design Computing and she established a new degree program: the Bachelor of Design Computing. While at the National Science Foundation (NSF) from 2006-2010, she was Deputy Director of the Information and Intelligent Systems Division and a Program Director. At NSF, she established the CreativeIT program and helped manage the Human Centered Computing, Cyber-Enabled Discovery and Innovation, Design Science, and Social-Computational Systems Programs. While at the University of Maryland, she developed collaborative projects on crowdsourcing design for citizen science and introduced design thinking to graduate projects in information management.
