Jennifer Widom


Jennifer Widom is the Frederick Emmons Terman Dean of the Stanford School of Engineering and the Fletcher Jones Professor of Computer Science and professor in the Stanford Department of Electrical Engineering. She was the chair of the computer science department from 2009 to 2014, and served as a senior associate dean from 2014 to 2016. In February 2017 she was named Dean of the School of Engineering. In 2015, ACM conferred her with the ACM-W Athena Lecturer Award to honor prominent women Computer Scientists for the introduction of fundamental concepts and architectures of active database systems, which includes an honorarium of $10,000.
Widom earned a PhD in computer science from Cornell University in 1987, and BS degree from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in 1982.
Widom is also a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
Widom has co-authored four academic textbooks, providing students with a beginning and advanced introduction to database systems. These books offer a comprehensive approach, focusing on database design, use, and implementation of applications and management systems. The course materials have been utilized at the junior, senior, and graduate levels in the computer science department.
In late 2011, Widom launched one of the first Massive Open Online Courses, entitled "Introduction to Databases". The course had more than 100,000 enrolled students, and launched at the same time as two other MOOCs by Stanford University School of Engineering faculty. In 2018, she won the Erna Hamburger prize from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne -Women in Science and Humanities Foundation.
She is the daughter of Lois Widom and Harold Widom. Her husband, Alex Aiken, is also a computer science professor at Stanford.

Published works