Robyn R. Lutz is an American computer scientist whose research involves software engineering, including modeling and checking software requirements and software system safety. She is a professor of computer science at Iowa State University.
Lutz majored in English at the University of Kansas, graduating with the highest distinction in 1974, earned a master's degree in Spanish there in 1976, and completed a Ph.D. in Spanish in 1980, under the supervision of Raymond Souza.[1][2] Despite this non-technical background, she became a member of the technical staff at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, associated with the California Institute of Technology, in 1983, and continued to hold an affiliation there until 2012.[2]
Returning to graduate study, she earned a master's degree in computer science in 1990 from Iowa State University.[1][2] She held an affiliate assistant professor title there from 1994 to 2000. In 2000 she became a regular-rank associate professor, and in 2005 she was promoted to full professor.[2]
Lutz was named a Distinguished Scientist in the Association for Computing Machinery in 2014.[3] In 2021, she received the lifetime service award from the IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference.[4] She was elected as an IEEE Fellow in 2022, "for contributions to software requirements for safety-critical systems".[5]
Lutz is married to Jack Lutz, a professor of mathematics and computer science at Iowa State University; their son Neil Lutz[6] is also a computer scientist and a visiting assistant professor of computer science at Swarthmore College.[7] They have published together on algorithmic game theory in DNA computing.[8]