By Andrea Estrada

Richard Kemmerer, professor of computer science, is the first scholar appointed to the UCSB Leadership Endowed Chair in Computer Science. The leadership chair was established in 2006 with a $500,000 gift from an anonymous donor.

“I am really honored to be the first recipient of the computer science leadership chair,” said Kemmerer. “I was the first faculty member hired into the department when it was established 28 years ago, and I have watched it grow from a core of five professors to a first-rate, nationally and internationally ranked department. I am really proud of what we have accomplished.”

Added Amr El Abbadi, chair of the department, “Professor Kemmerer is a pioneer in the field of computer security research, and his appointment to the endowed chair is a clear indication of his stature and eminence. Security of computer systems is of utmost importance, and Professor Kemmerer and UCSB are clearly in a leadership position. They are forging the way for the future.”

A principal investigator on many government and private sector projects, Kemmerer leads the Computer Security Group at UCSB. Under his direction, the organization has addressed the need for better languages and tools for designing, building, validating, and securing software systems.

“Dick Kemmerer is one of the most innovative, productive people in the entire field of computer security,” said Matthew Tirrell, dean of the College of Engineering.

He is a Fellow of both the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Computer Society and the Association for Computing Machinery. Past vice president of the IEEE Computer Society, he is also past editor-in-chief of the scholarly journal Transactions on Software Engineering.

Kemmerer has served on several National Academy of Sciences committees and the National Science Foundation’s Computer and Information Science and Engineering advisory committee. He is a past member of, and currently serves on Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing Academic Advisory Board.

He has written widely on computer security, formal specification and verification, software testing, programming languages, and software complexity measures.