Shuah Khan is an American

software engineer Software engineering is a branch of both computer science and engineering focused on designing, developing, testing, and maintaining software applications. It involves applying engineering principles and computer programming expertise to develop ...

recognized for her contributions to the

Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a Free and open-source software, free and open source Unix-like kernel (operating system), kernel that is used in many computer systems worldwide. The kernel was created by Linus Torvalds in 1991 and was soon adopted as the k ...

. In 2019, she became the first female

Linux Foundation The Linux Foundation (LF) is a non-profit organization established in 2000 to support Linux development and open-source software projects. Background The Linux Foundation started as Open Source Development Labs in 2000 to standardize and prom ...

Fellow, joining notable figures such as

Linus Torvalds Linus Benedict Torvalds ( , ; born 28 December 1969) is a Finnish software engineer who is the creator and lead developer of the Linux kernel. He also created the distributed version control system Git. He was honored, along with Shinya Yam ...

and

Greg Kroah-Hartman Greg Kroah-Hartman is a major Linux kernel developer. , he is the Linux kernel maintainer for the branch, the staging subsystem, USB, driver core, debugfs, kref, kobject, and the sysfs kernel subsystems, Userspace I/O (with Hans J. Koch), ...

as the third fellow at the time.

Early life and education

Born in India, Khan obtained a bachelor's degree in

electronic engineering Electronic engineering is a sub-discipline of electrical engineering that emerged in the early 20th century and is distinguished by the additional use of active components such as semiconductor devices to amplify and control electric current flo ...

and a master's degree in

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

from

Colorado State University Colorado State University (Colorado State or CSU) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Fort Collins, Colorado, United States. It is the flagship university of the Colorado State University Syst ...

. After completing her education, she worked at

Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, commonly referred to as ''Bell Labs'', is an American industrial research and development company owned by Finnish technology company Nokia. With headquarters located in Murray Hill, New Jersey, Murray Hill, New Jersey, the compa ...

, followed by 13 years at

Hewlett Packard Enterprise The Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company (HPE) is an American multinational information technology company based in Spring, Texas. It is a business-focused organization which works in servers, storage, networking, containerization software and ...

and 5 years at

Samsung Samsung Group (; stylised as SΛMSUNG) is a South Korean Multinational corporation, multinational manufacturing Conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered in the Samsung Town office complex in Seoul. The group consists of numerous a ...

Linux kernel contributions

Khan made her first contribution to the Linux kernel in 2011, by adding a new

device driver In the context of an operating system, a device driver is a computer program that operates or controls a particular type of device that is attached to a computer or automaton. A driver provides a software interface to hardware devices, enabli ...

for the

LED A light-emitting diode (LED) is a semiconductor device that emits light when current flows through it. Electrons in the semiconductor recombine with electron holes, releasing energy in the form of photons. The color of the light (corresp ...

sub-system as part of the Android Driver Mainlining effort. Khan has served on the Linux Technical Advisory Board (TAB) and as chair of the ELISA Project Technical Steering Committee. As of October 2024, she maintains the Kernel Selftest (kselftest) framework, the USB over IP driver, the CPU power monitoring subsystem, and the Virtual Media Controller driver. She has significantly contributed to kselftest, a regression testing suite for the Linux kernel. In the early stages, testing in the kernel was mostly limited to build and

boot A boot is a type of footwear. Most boots mainly cover the foot and the ankle, while some also cover some part of the lower calf. Some boots extend up the leg, sometimes as far as the knee or even the hip. Most boots have a heel that is clearl ...

tests. Khan introduced a more comprehensive testing framework to detect regressions earlier, before they could impact users. Her efforts resulted in "kselftest", which enables developers to run sanity tests and ensure the stability of their changes. This framework is now integrated into KernelCI and the 0-day test service. Describing herself as a generalist, she has also worked on the media subsystem by solving shared device resource management problems impacting components of the Media Controller Device Allocator API. In 2020, Khan provided a "Signed-off-by" tag for a patch recommending inclusive terminology in the Linux kernel. This change was approved and merged by

. The patch advised developers to avoid terms such as "master", "slave", "blacklist", and "whitelist". Alternatives such as primary/secondary, denylist/allowlist, and blocklist/passlist are suggested. Khan has presented several times at the annual Linux Kernel Developers Summit.

Community involvement

Khan also leads the Community Bridge Program, which aims to empower open-source developers by providing tools for funding, improving security, and promoting diversity. She advocates for increasing the participation of women in the kernel community.

Publications

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shuah Khan Living people American computer programmers American software engineers Indian computer programmers Indian software engineers Linux Foundation fellows Linux kernel programmers Year of birth missing (living people)