Maher Named Deputy Division Director of the ISS Division of NSF

CEE Alumna Dr. Mary Lou Maher (MS 1982, PhD 1985) has been named Deputy Division Director of the Information and Intelligent Systems (IIS) Division of the National Science Foundation (NSF). Dr. Maher joined NSF in 2006 as an IIS Program Director to explore a funding emphasis on creativity and computing. She is currently co-chair of the Cyber-enabled Discovery and Innovation Working Group and Deputy Cluster Lead of the Human Centered Computing program.

Prior to joining NSF, Dr. Maher was a faculty member at the University of Sydney and at Carnegie Mellon University. She is best known for her research in computational models of creative design, designing in virtual worlds, tangible interfaces and spatial cognition, and motivated reinforcement learning as computational curiosity.