Who We Are: Ruth Davis

Ruth E. Davis is the Robert W. Peters Professor of Computer Engineering and Associate Dean for Undergraduate Engineering at Santa Clara University. Ruth joined the University in 1979 (the first woman faculty member in the Engineering School) after earning her Ph.D. in Information Sciences from the University of California at Santa Cruz. Her dissertation “Generating Correct Programs From Logic Specifications” won the 1979 ACM Doctoral Forum Award for Outstanding Ph.D. Thesis in Computer Science. Her research has been focused in functional and logic programming, and formal methods in software engineering. Her books include a whimsical though rigorous introductory computing book Thinking About TLC-Logo, with John Allen, and the textbook Truth, Deduction, and Computation. She has served on the steering committee of the Santa Clara University Center for Science, Technology, and Society, the advisory board for the Women and Gender Studies Program, and she is faculty advisor for the award-winning SCU student chapter of the Society of Women Engineers. She has been involved in several activities to increase the participation of underrepresented groups in engineering, including work with: the Summer Engineering Seminar at SCU, Women of Vision for the Tech Museum of Innovation, the Society of Women Engineers, GetSET, and the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology.