Rate My Professor Sharon Simmons

Sharon Simmons is a Professor of Computer Science and serves as the Department Head of the Department of Computer Science at James Madison University, a position she has held since joining the institution in 2010. Her academic background includes a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Southern Mississippi in 1984, an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Southern Mississippi in 1991, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the College of William & Mary in 1999. Before her role at JMU, she was an associate professor at the University of West Florida from 2001 to 2010 and at the University of West Georgia from 1997 to 2001.

Sharon Simmons' research specializations and academic interests focus on program comprehension, monitoring distributed systems, and network security. Her ongoing projects address comprehension of distributed systems and networking, the Feature Location problem, and real-time instrumentation of large software systems. Key publications include "An approach to feature location in distributed systems" with D. Edwards and N. Wilde (2006), "Industrial tools for the feature location problem: an exploratory study" with D. Edwards, N. Wilde, J. Homan, and M. Groble (2006), "Locating software features in a soa composite application" with J. Coffey, L. White, and N. Wilde (2010), "A novel self-evolving intelligent multiagent framework for power system control and protection" with A. Manickam, S. Kamalasadan, and D. Edwards (2013), and "Maintenance of service oriented architecture composite applications: static and dynamic support" with L.J. White, T. Reichherzer, J. Coffey, and N. Wilde (2013). At James Madison University, she teaches courses including CS 149: Introduction to Programming and CS 261: Computer Systems I. She is also profiled by the National Center for Women & Information Technology.