Jennifer Rexford, chair of the Department of Computer Science, has been named the 2016-2017 Athena Lecturer by the Association for Computing Machinery, the largest professional society in computing research and education. The award recognizes female researchers who have made fundamental contributions to computer science.

Rexford, the Gordon Y.S. Wu Professor of Engineering, is a leader in computer networking. Her research has focused on methods to improve and expand digital communications. Among other areas, she has contributed to advances in the Border Gateway Protocols (BGP), which enables communications across the many networks that form the internet. She has also helped establish methods to improve the design and control of networks at multiple levels.

“BGP is the ‘glue’ that binds the Internet together and Jennifer’s innovations have vastly improved the BGP’s effectiveness,” Judith Olson, who heads the ACM organization that names the lecturer, said in a statement released by ACM.

Rexford received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Princeton and her doctorate from the University of Michigan. She joined the Princeton faculty in 2005. Among other honors, she is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and she is an ACM fellow. She is the recipient of ACM’s Grace Murray Hopper Award for outstanding young computer professionals.

The Athena Lecturer is named annually by the ACM’s Council on Women in Computing. Rexford is scheduled to be honored at the ACM’s annual awards banquet in San Francisco in June.