For much of its existence, software engineering has not had to deal directly with safety. Software is an abstraction and abstractions do not directly harm anyone or anything: it does not explode, catch on fire, or exude toxins. It can, of course, indirectly cause harm by providing unsafe control over physical processes that are directly dangerous. But until relatively recently, software was used to control dangerous physical processes only in limited and constrained circumstances. That genie has been let out of the bottle and nearly every dangerous system is now controlled by software. In this presentation, I will describe what needs to be done to limit the damage done by software and the new practices that are required to deal with the problem.

Dr. Nancy Leveson has worked in the field of system safety for 30 years. Currently she is Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and also Professor of Engineering Systems at MIT. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and has received many awards such as the ACM Allen Newell Award for outstanding computer science research, the AIAA Information Systems Award for “developing the field of software safety and for promoting responsible software and system engineering practices where life and property are at stake,” and the ACM Sigsoft Outstanding Research Award. She has published over 200 research papers and is author of a book, Safeware: System Safety and Computers, published by Addison-Wesley and recently translated into Japanese and a new book Engineering a Safer World published by MIT Press in January 2012.