Department of Computer Science alumna Lucy Nowell inducted into the College of Engineering Academy of Excellence

Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering inducted six new members at its 19th annual Academy of Engineering Excellence. One of the six inducted this year was Department of Computer Science alumna Lucy Nowell.

The academy consists of 152 alumni out of Virginia Tech’s approximately 67,000 living engineering alumni who have achieved exceptional career successes.

Nowell received a bachelor’s and master’s degree in theater from the University of Alabama in 1972 and 1974, respectively, then earned an M.F.A. in drama from the University of New Orleans in 1982. She worked in various instructor and professor positions in the dramatic arts at Lynchburg College before coming to Virginia Tech to earn her master’s degree (’93) and Ph.D. (’98) in computer science. During her graduate education at Virginia Tech, she served as a graduate research assistant in the Virginia Tech Department of Computer Science and worked as a summer intern at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center. After completing her Ph.D. coursework,

Nowell returned to Lynchburg College as chair of their  Department of Computer Science, having also served as an associate professor of computer science and theater. In 2002, Nowell became deputy program manager for the Advanced Research and Development Activity/Disruptive Technology Office’s Novel Intelligence from Massive Data project, then a year later became the program manager of the Intelligence Community Advanced Research project. In 2007, she became program director of the NSF Office of Cyberinfrastructure. Throughout all of this, she also served as a chief/staff scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Lab. Since 2009, she has worked at the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research as a GS 15-10 computer scientist, program manager, and computer science team leader of the Computational Science Research Division. She is currently a member of the Virginia Tech Chapter of Upsilon Pi Epsilon National Computer Science Honor Society and of the Association for Computing Machinery, and has previously served as a member of various national higher education and theater arts organizations.

The academy was founded in 1999 by F. William Stephenson, former dean of the College of Engineering and by the college’s advisory board.

Read more about the academy and this year’s inductees here.