Muffy Calder

Biography Calder was born Muffy Thomas on 21 May 1958 in Shawinigan, Quebec, Canada to Carmen and Lois (Hallen) van Thomas. She graduated with a BSc degree in computer science from the University of Stirling, and completed a PhD in computational science at the University of St Andrews in 1987 under the supervision of Roy Dyckhoff. She published widely under the surname Thomas prior to her marriage to David Calder in 1998. She became Chief Scientific Adviser to the Scottish Government on 1 March 2012. In 2015 she was appointed to the Council of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

Research Calder summarises her research interests as "mathematical modelling and automated reasoning for concurrent, communicating systems". Calder published an influential overview on the feature interaction problem, with more than 300 citations at Google Scholar. Her research has extended to applying computer science methods to biochemical networks and cell signalling in bioinformatics, resulting in a number of papers. and Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2020 Birthday Honours for services to research and education.

She holds fellowships of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2000),

In June 2024 Calder was awarded a DSc honoris causa by the University of St Andrews in recognition of her contributions to computer science and her services to the wider scientific community.

Calder was listed as 21st most influential woman in Scotland, 2012, by The Herald.