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Richard Kemmerer, a renowned professor of computer science at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is the first scholar appointed to the Leadership Endowed Chair in Computer Science.

The Leadership Chair was established in 2006 with a $500,000 gift from an anonymous donor.

“I am really honored to be the first recipient of the Computer Science Leadership Chair,” said Kemmerer. “I was the first faculty member hired into the department when it was established 28 years ago and I have watched it grow from a core of five professors to a first-rate nationally and internationally ranked department. I am really proud of what we have accomplished.”

Added Amr El Abbadi, chair of the computer science department: “Professor Kemmerer is a pioneer in the field of computer security research, and his appointment to the Leadership Endowed Chair is a clear indication of his stature and eminence. Security of computer systems is of utmost importance, and Professor Kemmerer and UCSB are clearly in a leadership position. They are forging the way for the future.”

A principal investigator on many government and private sector projects, Kemmerer leads the Computer Security Group at UCSB. Under his direction, the organization has addressed the need for better languages and tools for designing, building, validating, and securing software systems.

“Dick Kemmerer is one of the most innovative, productive people in the entire field of computer security,” said Matthew Tirrell, dean of the College of Engineering at UCSB.

A specialist in computer security, Kemmerer is a Fellow of both the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Computer Society and the Association for Computing Machinery. A past vice president of the IEEE Computer Society, he currently serves on that body’s board of governors, and is a past editor-in-chief of Transactions on Software Engineering, a scholarly journal published monthly by IEEE. He is a past member of the National Science Foundation’s Computer and Information Science and Engineering advisory committee, and currently serves on Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing Academic Advisory Board.

Kemmerer has served on several National Academy of Sciences committees. They include: the Committee on Computer Security in the DOE, the System Security Study Committee, the Committee for Review of the Oversight Mechanisms for Space Shuttle Flight Software Processes, the Committee on Maintaining the Privacy and Security in Health Care Applications, and the Committee on the Review of Programs for Command and Control Systems.

Kemmerer has written numerous papers on computer security, formal specification and verification, software testing, programming languages, and software complexity measures. He is the author of “Formal Specification and Verification of an Operating System Security Kernel” (UMI Research Press, 1982), and co-author of “Realizing the Potential of C4I: Fundamental Challenges” (The National Academies Press, 1999), “For the Record: Protecting Electronic Health Information” (The National Academies Press, 1997), and “Computers at Risk: Safe Computing in the Information Age” (NetLibrary, Inc., 1991).

Endowed chairs are highly prized academic positions that enable a university to attract and retain distinguished scholars and to develop more fully a field of study by providing ongoing financial support for enhanced research and instruction.

Since the inception of The Campaign for UC Santa Barbara in 2000, UCSB’s endowment–now estimated at $190 million–has grown by $115 million. Forty-four new endowed professorships have been established during the campaign, bringing UCSB’s total to 68.