Debra J. Richardson

Debra J. Richardson is a professor of informatics and founding dean of UCI’s Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS). She has been on the UCI faculty since 1987. Under her leadership as chair, the ICS department was promoted to the first and only computing-focused school in the University of California system in December 2002, after which she was named the Ted and Janice Smith Dean of the new school. Richardson was instrumental in securing a transformational $20 million endowment for the school, resulting in naming the school after philanthropist Donald Bren. She served as dean through June 2010.

Richardson has been a long-time advocate of increasing the participation of women and other underrepresented groups in computing. She has served on the leadership team of NCWIT since its inception, led the original NCWIT hub on undergraduate education, and currently leads UCI’s NCWIT PaceSetter team.  She recently led UCI’s Extension Services team, which received the NCWIT’s 2016 Grand Prize Award for Excellence in Promoting Women in Undergraduate Computing.

Richardson also works on improving CS education, passionate about creating an environment in which all students are exposed to computer science, so that they might become the creators of computing technology and not just users. She chairs the Alliance for California Computing Education for Students and Schools (ACCESS) which led to CSforCA, advocacy movements focused on reforming California education policies so all California students have equitable access to high-quality K-12 computer science education, especially those who have typically been disadvantaged and underrepresented in the field.  Since 2005, she has chaired ACM’s Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) Advisory Council, and for two years, she served as chair of Computer Science Education Week (CSEdWeek), a week endorsed by Congress in 2009 to recognize the transformative role of computing in society and the critical need to bolster computer science education at all levels.  She was recently appointed by California’s Superintendent of Public Instruction to co-chair a panel to develop recommendations for a Computer Science Strategic Implementation Plan for California.

Richardson serves as PI of California’s participation in the NSF-funded Expanding Computing Education Pathways Broadening Participation in Computing Alliance. She recently worked with the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing to establish a Supplementary Authorization in Computer Science, replacing an outdated authorization focused on computer applications, and is currently leading CS1C@OC, a NSF-funded CS10K effort to train 100 in-service teachers to provide quality computer science primarily to low-income students of color in Orange County California (and coincidentally receive the CS authorization).  She is also leading a NSF-funded CSforAll RPP focused on infusing computational thinking for English learners in grades 3-5 with Santa Ana Unified School District, where the majority of students are low-income (91%), Latinx (96%), English learners (60% but even higher in the elementary grades).

A leader in software engineering research, Richardson pioneered research in “specification-based testing,” whereby formal specifications are employed to guide software testing. She has recently expanded her research to adapting software engineering methods to socially relevant domains — particularly ICTD (Information and Communication Technologies for Development), with a specific interest in developing new requirements engineering approaches for work with computationally marginalized people, such as those in developing countries, and for the domain of environmental sustainability. Her research has been recognized by designation as an Automated Software Engineering (ASE) Fellow, and also with two retrospective impact awards from ACM SIGSoft.  She recently served a term on CRA’s Computing Community Consortium Council.

Richardson received her B.A. in mathematics from the University of California–San Diego in 1976, and her M.S. and Ph.D. in computer and information science from the University of Massachusetts–Amherst in 1978 and 1981, respectively. After finishing her Ph.D., she stayed on as visiting professor at UMass–Amherst for six years before joining UCI, mostly to play second row (lock) for the Beantown, the national championship women’s rugby team!