Barbara Ryder

Barbara Ryder served as head of the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech from 2008-15. She became a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) -- the largest and oldest international scientific and industrial computer society -- in 1998.

Among her awards are the National Center for Women in Technology (NCWIT) Harrold-Notkin Award for Graduate Mentoring and Research, conferred in 2021; the IEEE Computer Society Technical Community on Software Engineering Distinguished Women in Science and Engineering Award in 2018, and the ACM Special Interest Group on Software Engineering Distinguished Educator Award in 2015.

Ryder is strongly committed to diversity in computing. Under her leadership, the improvements to gender diversity in computer science at Virginia Tech tied nationally for 2nd place in the 2016 NCWIT Extension Services (NEXT) Awards.