Kathleen Fisher

Kathleen Fisher is the Director of the Information Innovation Office at DARPA and an adjunct professor of Computer Science at Tufts.

Previously, she was a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Tufts University. She served as chair of the department from 2016-2021. Previously, she was a program manager at DARPA where she started and managed the HACMS and PPAML programs, and a Principal Member of the Technical Staff at AT&T Labs Research. She received her PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University. Kathleen is an ACM Fellow and a Hertz Foundation Fellow. Service to the community has been a hallmark of Kathleen’s career. She has served as Chair of the ACM Special Interest Group in Programming Languages (SIGPLAN) and as Program Chair for three of SIGPLAN’s marquee conferences: PLDI, OOPSLA, ICFP. She has also served as an Associate Editor for TOPLAS and as an Editor of the Journal of Functional Programming. Kathleen has long been a leader in the effort to increase diversity and inclusion in Computer Science: she was Co-Chair of the Computing Research Association’s Committee on the Status of Women (CRA-W) for three years, and she co-founded SIGPLAN’s Programming Language Mentoring Workshop (PLMW) Series. Kathleen is a recipient of the SIGPLAN Distinguished Service Award. She is a past Chair of DARPA’s ISAT Study Group and a member of the Board of Trustees of Harvey Mudd College.