Cristina Lopes

Cristina Lopes is a Professor of Informatics at the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences, University of California, Irvine. She holds administrative roles including Director of the Master of Software Engineering Program and former Director of the Institute for Software Research. Her research focuses on software engineering, programming languages, and distributed systems, with contributions to open-source projects like OpenSimulator and AspectJ. She has authored the influential book Exercises in Programming Style.

Education: PhD from Northeastern University, MS/BS from Instituto Superior Técnico (Portugal). Awards include IEEE Fellow (2019), ECOOP Test of Time Award (2017), and ACM Distinguished Scientist (2011). She co-founded a virtual reality company for urban redevelopment and leads NSF-funded projects, including the prestigious CAREER Award.

Research Interests: Large-scale software systems, aspect-oriented programming, code clone detection, and applying AI to programming challenges. Her work bridges theory and practice, with applications in urban simulation and healthcare systems.

Awards and Grants: Over 15 awards including national and international distinctions. Grants focus on scalable software tools and environmental sustainability in computing.

Labs/Teams: Leads the Software Engineering Research Group and collaborates with industry partners on open-source infrastructure and AI-driven development tools.