Rate My Professor Leon Sterling

Professor Leon Sterling is a Professor in Software Engineering in the School of Computing and Information Systems within the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology at the University of Melbourne. He earned his BSc (Hons) in Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Melbourne in 1976 and his PhD in Mathematics from the Australian National University in 1981. Sterling's distinguished career includes early positions as Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh's Department of Artificial Intelligence from 1980 to 1983 and Dov Biegun Postdoctoral Fellow at the Weizmann Institute of Science from 1983 to 1985. He advanced to Full Professor at Case Western Reserve University's Department of Computer Engineering and Science by 1993, directing the Center for Automation and Intelligent Systems Research from 1989 to 1991. Returning to Australia in 1995, he joined the University of Melbourne as Professor of Computer Science until 2002, serving as Head of the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering from 1996 to 2002. He held the Chair of Software Innovation and Engineering from 2002 to 2010 and was Director of eResearch from 2007 to 2010. Subsequently, at Swinburne University of Technology, he was Dean of the Faculty of Information and Communication Technologies from 2010 to 2013 and Pro Vice-Chancellor (Digital Frontiers) from 2014 to 2015, continuing as Emeritus Professor since 2015. He returned to the University of Melbourne in 2019 as Professor of Software Engineering.

Sterling's research interests encompass agent-oriented software engineering, software engineering, logic programming, and artificial intelligence. He is the co-author of influential books including The Art of Prolog: Advanced Programming Techniques (MIT Press, 1986 and second edition 1994, with Ehud Shapiro) and The Art of Agent-Oriented Modeling (MIT Press, 2009, with Kuldar Taveter). He has edited key volumes such as Cooperative Information Agents, CIA2007 (Springer, 2007), Intelligent Systems - Concepts and Applications (Plenum Press, 1993), and The Practice of Prolog (MIT Press, 1990). Sterling has served on editorial boards including the International Journal of People-Oriented Programming and the Journal of Logic Programming. His leadership includes presidency of the Australian Council of Deans of ICT from 2012 to 2014 and Computing Research and Education (CORE) Australia from 2001 to 2005. He received the John Hughes Distinguished Service Award from CORE in 2015 and has contributed to committees such as the Australian Mathematics Trust and the Australian Informatics Olympiad Committee.