Maria Klawe

Maria Klawe (pronounced CLAW-vay) is the fifth president of Harvey Mudd College (since July 1, 2006). She was previously Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton University.

Biography
Klawe was born in Toronto, lived in Scotland from ages 4 to 12, and then returned to Canada, living with her family in Edmonton, Alberta. Klawe studied at the University of Alberta, dropped out to travel the world, and returned to earn her B.Sc. in 1973. She stayed at Alberta for her graduate studies, and in 1977 she earned her Ph.D. there in mathematics. She started a second Ph.D., in computer science, at the University of Toronto, but was offered a faculty position there before completing the degree. She spent eight years in the industry, serving at IBM Almaden Research Center, in San Jose, California, first as a research scientist, then as manager of the Discrete Mathematics Group and manager of the Mathematics and Related Computer Science Department. She and her husband Nick Pippenger then moved to the University of British Columbia, where she stayed for 15 years and served as head of the Department of Computer Science from 1988 to 1995, vice president of student and academic services from 1995 to 1998, and dean of science from 1998 to 2002. From UBC she moved to Princeton and then Harvey Mudd College. Previously a Canadian national, Klawe was among 5,996 persons who became citizens of the United States at a ceremony held at the Los Angeles Convention Center on Thursday, Jan. 29, 2009. Later in 2009, she joined the board of directors of the Microsoft Corporation.

In addition to her career as a scientist and academic, Maria is well known for her water color painting.

Awards and honors
In 1996 Klawe was inducted as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery. In 2006, Klawe was inducted as a founding Fellow of the Canadian Information Processing Society. She was awarded an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science in a ceremony at the University of Alberta on June 12, 2007. The University of Ottawa also conferred an honorary doctorate to her in a convocation on June 8, 2008.

Research
Some of Klawe's best-cited research works concern algorithms for solving geometric optimization problems, distributed leader election, the art gallery problem, and the effects of gender on electronic game-playing. She founded the Aphasia Project, a collaboration between UBC and Princeton to study aphasia and develop cognitive aids for people suffering from it, after her friend Anita Borg developed brain cancer. Klawe's Erdős number is 1.