Peri L. Tarr

Technical leader for collaborative analytics and optimization for software and systems engineering, with results transferred into IBM products, Tarr has served as a Research Staff Member at IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York. She has worked on and led various projects relating to issues of software composition, morphogenic software, and aspect-oriented software development (AOP), a programming paradigm that aims to increase modularity by allowing the separation of cross-cutting concerns. She received her B.S. degree in Zoology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1986, and her M.S. degree and Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1992 and 1996, respectively.

Between her B.S. degree and her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees, she worked full-time at the University of Massachusetts Physical Plant, attempting to introduce an automated system to help with the Plant's operations. After receiving her Ph.D., Tarr joined the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center as a Research Staff Member in 1996, where she worked on and led various projects relating to issues of software composition, morphogenic software, and aspect-oriented software development.

She served as Chief Architect for Governance of Software Development, an IBM Research initiative that tied together the tools for teams of developers with the planning and financial management aspects required by enterprises. Tarr also served as the technical lead for an effort on collaborative analytics and optimization for software and systems engineering that involved IBM researchers from around the world as well as colleagues from IBM's Rational Software division. The team's research spanned much of the software lifecycle, from predictive portfolio management to development analytics and into support and maintenance, with results having transferred into IBM products.

Her work on multi-dimensional separation of concerns was recognized as the Most Influential Paper at the 2009 International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE). She served as the 2005 Program Chair of the Aspect-Oriented Software Development conference and as the 2006 general chair of ACM SIGPLAN's OOPSLA 2006 Conference.