Bill Scherlis

William L. Scherlis is a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and a special advisor to the SEI. From 2019 to 2022, he served as director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Information Innovation Office (I2O), where he led program managers in the development of programs in artificial intelligence (AI), cybersecurity, secure software, and information operations. He was awarded the DARPA Superior Public Service medal and, during prior DARPA service, received a Senior Executive Performance award.

At CMU, Scherlis served for 12 years as head of the Software and Societal Systems Department (S3D) in the School of Computer Science. S3D hosts research and degree programs related to software, security, the Internet of Things (IoT), and related topics. He founded CMU’s PhD program in software engineering (SwE) in 1999 and led it for its first decade. Scherlis has led and participated in multiple national studies, including National Research Council study committees. He has testified before Congress on the federal AI workforce, software sustainment, computing innovation, and the roles for a federal chief information officer (CIO). He served as program chair for conferences including the ACM Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE) and the ACM Symposium on Partial Evaluation and Program Manipulation (PEPM). Scherlis is a Life Fellow of the IEEE and a Lifetime National Associate of the National Academy of Sciences.