Dr. Barbara Liskov is Institute Professor of computer science at MIT and Associate Provost for Faculty Equity. Her seminal work in software design has been the basis of every major programming language since 1975, including Ada, C++, Java and C#. By designing CLU, an object-oriented programming language, she introduced the now-pervasive concept of data abstraction. Her current research projects include Byzantine-fault-tolerant storage systems, peer-to-peer computing, and support for automatic deployment of software upgrades in large-scale distributed systems. Dr. Liskov is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a fellow of the ACM. She received the ACM Turing Award in 2008, the IEEE Von Neumann medal in 2004, the lifetime achievement award from the Society of Women Engineers in 1996, and in 2003 was named one of the 50 most important women in science by Discover magazine.