IEEE Conferences

Dr. Forrest Shull, 2021 IEEE Computer Society President
Opening Remarks
Tuesday September 9, 15:00 UTC

Dr. Forrest Shull is the Lead for Defense Software Acquisition Policy Research at the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute (SEI). He leads the SEI technical response to the Department of Defense (DoD) in support of several important activities, including Congressionally mandated initiatives, to improve acquisition by incorporating modern software development practices. This work culminated in the development of the Department’s first software-specific acquisition policy in 2020, which is supporting rapid and iterative delivery of software capabilities to the operational environment to meet the highest priority user needs.

Shull joined SEI after 15 years at Fraunhofer USA, a nonprofit research and technology transfer organization, where he established and was Director of the Measurement and Knowledge Management Division. He has been a lead researcher on projects for the DoD, the NASA Office of Safety and Mission Assurance (OSMA), the NASA Safety Center, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the National Science Foundation, and commercial companies. His research work for NASA won a Group Achievement Award “in recognition of the significant impact on NASA software products and for advancing the state-of-the-art of the software industry.” He is the author of over 100 peer-reviewed publications.

Shull is the current president of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Computer Society. He has served on the Society’s Board of Governors and Executive Committee since 2015. In these roles he has led and been a key participant in initiatives aimed at instituting more data-driven decision making and transforming the Society to better address the current needs of its members. From 2011 to 2014, he served as Editor in Chief of IEEE Software, the premier publication for bridging software research and practice, during which time he oversaw the launch of a new digital edition of the magazine and broadened the magazine’s reach into multimedia.