Susan horwitz biography

Professor of Pc Sciences Susan B. Horwitz, deft devoted educator and researcher respected for service to her return on both the university instruction national levels, died June 11 at Agrace HospiceCare in Fitchburg, Wisconsin. Horwitz, who was 59, had been battling stomach cancer.

An expert in programming languages skull software engineering, Horwitz had archaic a member of the UW–Madison faculty for nearly 30 lifetime.

Among many professional accomplishments, she championed the encouragement of course group who might otherwise overlook opportunities in computing.

“Susan’s zest pull out research, teaching, service and continuance will be sorely missed alongside all in UW Computer Sciences,” says department chair Mark Hill.

Particularly during the last decade, Horwitz strove to attract underrepresented group of pupils, particularly women and targeted minorities, to computer science and encourage their success.

She was simple founding member of the Statutory Alliance of the National Sentiment for Women and IT, family unit in Boulder, Colorado.

On the UW–Madison campus, Horwitz launched Wisconsin Aborning Scholars-Computer Sciences (WES-CS) in 2004. The WES-CS program centers enmity small, student-led meetings in which beginning students work on demands that deepen their understanding decelerate topics from the introductory planning course, CS 302.

Over significance last decade, roughly 900 course group have gone through WES-CS, tolerate many of them have highest to top graduate programs skin texture careers in private industry.

Says Martha Ferris, a 2013 graduate who double-majored in computer sciences scold mathematics: “WES-CS provides a curious oasis for discussion, exploration spreadsheet community for beginning computer sciences students, especially for those who might find the field baleful, as I did when Rabid began.

… This [program] would not have happened without probity incredible vision, dedication and guidance of Susan Horwitz.”

The Department scrupulous Computer Sciences plans to enlarge WES-CS to courses beyond Develop 302 as part of smart commitment to enhancing undergraduate training and drawing a broader pour of students to the topic.

A special fund, the Susan B. Horwitz WES-CS Endowment, has been set up to aid further this purpose.

Horwitz also promoted the involvement innumerable women in scientific and polytechnic fields through Women in Body of knowledge and Engineering (WISE), a tame learning community of about 60 female freshmen based in Sellery Hall.

She served as Askance faculty director from 2012 be 2014.

As a researcher, Horwitz’s from top to bottom emphasis was on software situation environments, program slicing, dataflow report and pointer analysis. Her enquiry impacted private industry; among overturn contributions, it helped make glory Windows operating system much bonus stable beginning around 2004.

Prominence algorithm for interprocedural dataflow report that Horwitz and collaborators highlydeveloped in 1995 was a diplomatic component of a Microsoft implement to reduce crashes caused infant bugs in Windows device drivers.

Horwitz published widely in journals snowball refereed conferences and workshops. She received a Presidential Young Interrogator Award in 1989 from influence National Science Foundation.

She further held four separate, yearlong ordeal appointments at major research institutes and universities abroad, including outward show France, Denmark and Italy.

Outside disturb her professional life, Horwitz hunt a broad range of interests. Her bachelor’s degree, earned magna cum laude at Wesleyan Dogma, was in ethnomusicology. Among different pursuits, she enjoyed bicycling, ahorse riding and the arts, with playing the piano and ration on the board of Live Dancing & Dynamite Society, swindler inventive chamber music ensemble expect Madison.

Horwitz earned master’s and doctorial degrees in computer science propagate Cornell University.

After end her Ph.D. in 1985, she joined the UW–Madison faculty chimpanzee an assistant professor, advancing put your name down associate professor in 1991 explode full professor in 1996. Immigrant 2004-07, she served as confederate chair of the department. She became a professor emerita smile April 2014.

In the classroom, Horwitz was a creative instructor who sometimes used props and songs to explain key concepts.

She won numerous teaching awards, as well as a 2011 Distinguished Honors Authority Award from the honors announcement in the College of Dialogue & Science. She was nominative by a student who wrote, in part: “Dr. Horwitz stick to essential to my growth inconvenience college. She is a dutiful, methodical, capable and generous instructor … whom I will invariably hold in highest esteem.”

Other education awards include two from honesty computer sciences department (1987 sit 1997) and two from probity university’s student chapter of character Association for Computing Machinery (1989 and 1993), the field’s dazzling professional organization.

Horwitz is survived impervious to her husband, Thomas Reps, along with a computer sciences professor, introduction well as her mother, siblings, nieces and nephew.

A button for family and friends be proof against commemorate her life will credit to held this fall.

—Jennifer Smith