Jennifer Widom

Education

Widom earned a bachelor's degree in trumpet performance from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in 1982 and a PhD in computer science under David Gries from Cornell University in 1987.

Academic career

Widom began her career as a researcher at the IBM Almaden Research Center and joined Stanford University as a professor in 1993. She was the chair of the Stanford computer science department from 2009 to 2014, and served as senior associate dean for faculty and academic affairs in the School of Engineering from 2014 to 2016. In February 2017 she was named Dean of the School of Engineering.

Widom is a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) since 2005. Widom is also a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Widom has co-authored four academic textbooks on database systems. These books focus 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 (MOOCs), 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 for her work with MOOCs.

Personal life

Widom is the daughter of Lois Widom and Harold Widom, an American mathematician. Her uncle Benjamin Widom is on the Cornell faculty in chemistry. Widom is married to Alex Aiken, former chair of Stanford's computer science department. The couple has a son and a daughter.

Selected works

• Widom, Jennifer; (with H. Garcia-Molina and J. D. Ullman). Database Systems: The Complete Book, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 2002.
• Widom, Jennifer; (with J. D. Ullman). A First Course in Database Systems, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1997 and 2002.
• Widom, Jennifer; (with H. Garcia-Molina and J.D. Ullman). Database System Implementation, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 2000.
• Widom, Jennifer; (with S. Ceri). Active Database Systems: Triggers and Rules for Advanced Database Processing, San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann, 1996.

References

References

1. (February 27, 2017). "Computer scientist Jennifer Widom named dean of Stanford School of Engineering". Stanford.
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5. "Dean {{!}} Stanford University School of Engineering".
6. "Jennifer Widom's Home Page".
7. (27 February 2017). "Computer scientist Jennifer Widom named dean of Stanford School of Engineering". Stanford News.
8. "About ACM Athena Lecturer Award".
9. "Jennifer Widom elected to the National Academy of Engineering".
10. (September 2006). "Jennifer Widom Speaks Out". The Association for Computing Machinery.
11. (2009-04-20). "12 scholars named to American Academy of Arts and Sciences".
12. (25 September 2015). "MOOCs in Higher Education: Institutional Goals and Paths Forward". Palgrave Macmillan.
13. Pethuraja.S. (2 May 2015). "Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) For Everyone". Pethuraja.S.
14. SA, Agefi. (2018-10-06). "Le prix Erna Hamburger va à une pionnière des MOOCs".
15. Laboratory, SLAC National Accelerator. "SLAC Teams with Stanford to Tackle Exascale Challenges".
16. (January 26, 2021). "In Memoriam: Harold Widom (1932–2021)". UC Santa Cruz.
17. Mariwala, Vibhav. (February 28, 2017). "Widom named dean of School of Engineering". The Stanford Daily.