Linda Northrop has more than 35 years of experience in the software development field as a practitioner, researcher, manager, consultant, and educator. She is currently director of the Product Line Systems Program at the SEI where she leads the work in software architecture, software product lines, and predictable component engineering. Under her leadership, the SEI has developed software architecture and product line methods that are used worldwide, a series of five highly acclaimed books, and software architecture and software product line curricula that include 11 courses and 6 certificate programs.

Before joining the SEI, she was associated with both the United States Air Force Academy and the State University of New York as professor of computer science, and with both Eastman Kodak and IBM as a software engineer. She is a recipient of the Carnegie Science Award of Excellence for Information Technology and the New York State Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. She is a frequently invited speaker and has given keynotes at such conferences as the European Software Engineering Process Group (ESEPG) Conference, the Aspect-Oriented System Development (AOSD) Conference, and the International Conference on Software Engineering (ISCE).

She is coauthor of Software Product Lines: Practices and Patterns and chaired both the first and second international Software Product Line Conferences (SPLC1 and SPLC2). In addition, she is a member of the OOPSLA Steering and the AOSD Steering Committees, the Editorial Board of Transactions on Aspect-Oriented Software Development, the Clemson University Computer Science Industrial Advisory Board, The GSAW Organizing Committee, the ACM, and the IEEE Computer Society, and from 1993-2000 was a computer science accreditation commissioner.

She completed her undergraduate education at LeMoyne College and her graduate education at the State University College of New York at Brockport, Rochester Institute of Technology, and the University of Rochester.