Nancy Leveson

Specialization and Research Interests

System safety, organizational safety and safety culture, software engineering, safety of software-controlled systems, system engineering, system safety engineering, human-computer interaction

Teaching Interests

Software Engineering, System and Software Safety, Human-Computer Interaction

Academic Degrees

B.A, UCLA; M.S., UCLA; Ph.D., UCLA

Society Memberships

ACM, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Computer Society, System Safety Society, AIAA

Positions Held at MIT

Professor, 1999-present

Positions Held outside MIT

Boeing Professor of Computer Science, University of Washington

Biography

Nancy Leveson is Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and also Professor of Engineering Systems at MIT. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). Prof. Leveson conducts research on the topics of system safety, software safety, software and system engineering, and human-computer interaction. In 1999, she received the ACM Allen Newell Award for outstanding computer science research and in 1995 the AIAA Information Systems Award for “developing the field of software safety and for promoting responsible software and system engineering practices where life and property are at stake.” In 2005 she received the ACM Sigsoft Outstanding Research Award. She has published more than 200 research papers and is the author of two books, “Safeware: System Safety and Computers,” published by Addison-Wesley (1995), and Engineering a Safer World, published by MIT Press (2012). She consults extensively in industries on ways to prevent accidents.