Margaret Martonosi, a leading researcher in computer architecture and hardware design, has been named University Professor, Princeton’s highest honor for faculty.

Martonosi, the William M. Addy ’82 University Professor, has been widely recognized for her contributions to the design, modeling and verification of power-efficient computer systems. Her recent research focuses on computer architecture issues in quantum computing. Her appointment is effective July 1. 

“Margaret Martonosi’s appointment as a University Professor honors a career distinguished by visionary research in computer architecture, elected membership in national academies, and bold, strategic leadership at Princeton and the National Science Foundation,” said Dean of the Faculty Gene A. Jarrett. “She embodies the very essence of scholarly brilliance, dedicated service, and societal impact.”

“This is an extraordinary honor, and the news came as a wonderful surprise,” said Martonosi, who has served as the Hugh Trumbull Adams ’35 Professor of Computer Science since 2012. “My research career has offered me the chance to collaborate with amazing students and a wide range of wonderful colleagues, and to see our work lead to tangible benefits in many real-world computer systems. Through it all, I am grateful to Princeton for offering such a vibrant environment in which our ideas could germinate and advance. I am also grateful to Bill and Lydia Addy for their generosity in endowing this professorship and for their service and support to the University overall.”  

Martonosi was one of the architects of the Wattch power modeling infrastructure, a tool that was among the first to allow computer scientists to incorporate power consumption into early-stage computer systems design. Her work helped demonstrate that power needs can help dictate the design of computing systems. Her research group also tested power-efficient hardware and software approaches in mobile sensing applications through the ZebraNet project for wildlife tracking. More recently, Martonosi’s work has also focused on architecture and compiler issues in quantum computing.

Martonosi arrived at Princeton in 1994 as an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering with affiliated status in computer science. She was named a full professor in electrical engineering in 2004, and in 2010 was appointed as a full professor in the Department of Computer Science with affiliated status in electrical and computer engineering. Martonosi has taken on several leadership roles across the University during that time. From 2005 to 2007, she served as associate dean for academic affairs in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, and from 2017 to 2020, she served as director of the Keller Center for Innovation in Engineering Education. Her commitment to teaching and mentorship has been recognized with multiple accolades, including the Princeton University Graduate Mentoring Award in 2010.

Martonosi’s influence extends far beyond the University. In 2020, she took a leave from Princeton to lead the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering at the National Science Foundation. There, she helped shape national research priorities in computer science, broaden access to federal research funding and lead interagency efforts to drive research initiatives in artificial intelligence, quantum computing and semiconductor development. Earlier, in 2015 and 2016, she served as a technical adviser at the U.S. Department of State through the Jefferson Science Fellowship program, contributing scientific expertise to international policy discussions.

Her impact on the field is reflected in a series of prestigious appointments and honors. Martonosi is a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2021, she received the IEEE/ACM Eckert-Mauchly Award, the top lifetime achievement award in computer architecture, for her contributions to power-efficient system design. Most recently, she was honored with the 2024 ACM Frances E. Allen Award for Outstanding Mentoring.

These accolades are reinforced by Martonosi’s lasting contributions to research and innovation. She holds seven U.S. patents and has co-authored two technical reference books on power-aware computer architecture. In 2018, her expertise was further called upon as one of 13 co-authors of a National Academies Consensus Study Report on the state of quantum computing.

Martonosi received a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering from Cornell University in 1986 and a Master of Science in electrical engineering from Stanford University in 1987. She went on to earn her Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford in 1994.

Princeton currently endows 25 University Professorships. University Professors are recognized for demonstrating scholarly preeminence in their professional accomplishments, as well as making exceptional contributions to the University’s research and teaching community.

The William M. Addy ’82 University Professorship was made possible by a gift from William M. Addy, Class of 1982, and Lydia B. Addy.