Linda Ott, PhD

Dr. Linda M. Ott received her PhD in computer science from Purdue University in 1978. She joined Michigan Technological University’s faculty shortly thereafter and chaired the Department of Computer Science from 1996 to 2010. Her early research interests were in software engineering, including software processes, software measurement, and software engineering education. She has been a co-principal investigator on nearly $1.5 million in grants from industry and the National Science Foundation. Dr. Ott is a 2010 recipient of the ACM SIGSOFT Retrospective Paper Award for the paper The Program Dependence Graph in a Software Development Environment, co-authored with Dr. Karl Ottenstein and published in the Proceedings of the First ACM SIGSOFT/SIGPLAN Symposium on Practical Software Development Environments in April of 1984. She taught advanced software engineering at Siberian State Aerospace University in Krasnoyarsk, Russia as a Fulbright Scholar in 2012. Linda also taught Ethical and Social Aspects of Computing at Beijing Normal University Zhuhai in Zhuhai, China during the summer of 2011. Dr. Ott received the Michigan Technological University Inaugural Diversity Award in 2014. She was a founding organizer of the Michigan Celebration of Women in Computing and of the NCWIT Aspirations in Computing Michigan Affiliate Award for high school women. She is the project lead for Michigan Tech’s NCWIT Pacesetters team and for Michigan Tech’s NCWIT Extension Services for Undergraduate Programs team. As of March 2015, she is the Associate Dean for Special Initiatives in the College of Sciences and Arts.