Software Engineering Institute

PITTSBURGH, Pa., August 3, 2010—The Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute (SEI) announced that Dr. Douglas C. Schmidt has joined the SEI in its Arlington, Va., office as deputy director, research, and chief technology officer. Schmidt will lead the SEI in identifying and responding to the needs of sponsors, customers, and partners.

“I’ve been involved with the high impact work at the SEI for years, am excited to join the SEI leadership team, and look forward to helping shape future innovations in complex software-intensive systems,” Schmidt said.

Paul D. Nielsen, SEI director and CEO, said that Schmidt’s extensive and diverse background will be a valuable asset to the SEI, its sponsors, and its customers. “I'm pleased to welcome Doug to the SEI as our new CTO. I've admired his work, his energy, and his thoughtfulness for many years, and I look forward to partnering with him to create an even more exciting future for the SEI and our many stakeholders,” said Nielsen.

Before joining the SEI, Schmidt was a tenured professor and associate chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Vanderbilt University. He was previously a professor at the University of California, Irvine, and Washington University in St. Louis.  He also served as chief technology officer for Zircon Computing and Prism Technologies, where he was responsible for the companies’ technical vision, strategic directions, and growth.

Schmidt was a deputy office director and a program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), where he led the national research and development effort on middleware for distributed real-time and embedded (DRE) systems. He also co-chaired the Software Design and Productivity (SDP) Coordinating Group of the U.S. government's multi-agency Information Technology Research and Development (IT R&D) Program, which formulated the national multi-agency software research agenda.
Schmidt has published nine books and more than 450 technical papers covering a range of software-related R&D topics, including patterns, optimization techniques, and empirical analyses of object-oriented frameworks and domain-specific modeling environments that facilitate the development of DRE middleware and applications running over data networks and embedded system interconnects.

In addition to his academic research, commercial experience, and government service, Schmidt has two decades of experience leading the development of ACE, TAO, CIAO, and CoSMIC, which are widely used DRE middleware frameworks and model-driven tools used successfully by thousands of developers at hundreds of companies worldwide on national defense and security, datacom/telecom, financial services, medical engineering, and online gaming projects.

Schmidt holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in sociology from the College of William and Mary, as well as a master’s degree and doctorate in computer science from the University of California, Irvine.

About the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute
The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) is a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense and operated by Carnegie Mellon University. The SEI helps organizations make measurable improvements in their software engineering capabilities by providing technical leadership to advance the practice of software engineering. For more information, visit the SEI website at http://www.sei.cmu.edu.