Margo Ilene Seltzer is an American

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

. She is currently the Canada 150 Research Chair in Computer Systems and the Cheriton Family Chair in Computer Science at the

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a Public university, public research university with campuses near University of British Columbia Vancouver, Vancouver and University of British Columbia Okanagan, Kelowna, in British Columbia, Canada ...

. Previously, Seltzer was the Herchel Smith Professor of Computer Science at

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

's John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and director at the Center for Research on Computation and Society.

Education

HarryRLewis Harvard AppliedSciences11 TeachingFellows Halloween1982

Seltzer received her A.B. in applied mathematics from

Radcliffe College Radcliffe College was a Women's colleges in the United States, women's Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that was founded in 1879. In 1999, it was fully incorporated into Harvard Colle ...

in 1983, where she was teaching assistant under Harry R. Lewis at

. In 1992, she received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

, where her dissertation, "File System Performance and Transaction Support", was supervised by

Michael Stonebraker Michael Ralph Stonebraker (born October 11, 1943) is an American computer scientist specializing in database, database systems. Through a series of academic prototypes and commercial startups, Stonebraker's research and products are central to m ...

. Her work in

log-structured file system A log-structured filesystem is a file system in which data and metadata are written sequentially to a circular buffer, called a log. The design was first proposed in 1988 by John K. Ousterhout and Fred Douglis and first implemented in 1992 by ...

s, databases, and wide-scale caching is especially well-known, and she was lead author of the BSD-LFS paper.

Career

Academia

Seltzer became an assistant professor of computer science at

in 1992, and an associate professor in 1997. She held endowed chairs as a Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science in 2000, and as the Herchel Smith Professor of Computer Science in 2004. From 2005 to 2010, Seltzer was designated a Harvard College Professor in recognition of "particularly distinguished contributions to undergraduate teaching." Seltzer was the Associate Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences from 2002 to 2006, and an advisor to the Harvard Undergraduate Women in Computer Science. In September 2018, Seltzer joined the faculty at the

Department of Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to applied disciplines (including the design and ...

as the Canada 150 Research Chair in Computer Systems and the Cheriton Family Chair in Computer Science. In February 2019, she was elected a member of the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American Nonprofit organization, nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. It is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), along with the National Academ ...

Business

Seltzer co-founded

Sleepycat Software Sleepycat Software, Inc. was the software company primarily responsible for maintaining the Berkeley DB packages from 1996 to 2006. Company Berkeley DB is freely-licensed database software originally developed at the University of California ...

(developers of the

Berkeley DB Berkeley DB (BDB) is an embedded database software library for key/value data, historically significant in open-source software. Berkeley DB is written in C with API bindings for many other programming languages. BDB stores arbitrary key/data ...

embedded database) in 1996 and was the CTO until 2006, when the company was acquired by

Oracle Corporation Oracle Corporation is an American Multinational corporation, multinational computer technology company headquartered in Austin, Texas. Co-founded in 1977 in Santa Clara, California, by Larry Ellison, who remains executive chairman, Oracle was ...

. She served as an architect on the Oracle Berkeley DB team for several years before transferring to Oracle Labs where she continues to act as an architect. Seltzer was a director of

USENIX USENIX is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit membership organization based in Berkeley, California and founded in 1975 that supports advanced computing systems, operating system (OS), and computer networking research. It organizes several confe ...

from 2005 to 2014, serving as vice president for one year and president for two. In 2019, she received the USENIX Lifetime Achievement Award for her seminal work on Berkeley DB and provenance systems and her dedication to the USENIX community at large. In 2011, Seltzer was made a Fellow of the

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional membe ...

in recognition of "outstanding accomplishments in computing and information technology and/or outstanding service to ACM and the larger computing community." In July 2020, Seltzer accepted the SIGMOD Software Systems award on behalf of the Sleepycat Software team.

Personal life

She is married to software developer Keith Bostic.

References

External links

* *http://mis-misinformation.blogspot.com/
Appreciation of Margo Seltzer
for

Ada Lovelace Day Ada Lovelace Day is an annual event held on the second Tuesday of October to celebrate and raise awareness of the contributions of women to STEM fields. It is named after mathematician and computer science pioneer Ada Lovelace. It started in 200 ...

Aaron Swartz Aaron Hillel Swartz (; November 8, 1986January 11, 2013), also known as AaronSw, was an American computer programmer, entrepreneur, writer, political organizer, and Internet hacktivism, hacktivist. As a programmer, Swartz helped develop the we ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Seltzer, Margo Living people Year of birth missing (living people) American computer scientists American women computer scientists University of California, Berkeley alumni Harvard University faculty 2011 fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Radcliffe College alumni American chief technology officers Women chief technology officers Academic staff of the University of British Columbia American women academics 21st-century American women scientists