SEI Director Nielsen Selected for PBT Diamond Award

PITTSBURGH, Feb. 17, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- The Pittsburgh Business Times announced that Dr. Paul D. Nielsen, director and CEO of the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University, is a recipient of the newspaper's 2014 Diamond Awards, which honor the region's top CEOs and presidents.

Awardees are selected based on evaluation of service philosophy, relationship to employees, and contribution to the community. Diamond Award winners represent three categories: small/medium for-profit, large for-profit and non-profit. They are selected by an independent panel of judges, all of whom were former Diamond Award winners. Nielsen was selected in the non-profit category.

After retiring from active duty in the U.S. Air Force, Nielsen joined the SEI as director and CEO in 2004. Under his leadership, the SEI has grown from just under 450 employees in 2004 to 635 full-time employees by 2014. He has overseen the development and expansion of the SEI in areas of software process improvement, software engineering, and network cybersecurity. Responsible for guiding critical research activities related to software architecture, complex software systems, and cybersecurity to address present and future challenges faced by our nation's defense organizations, Nielsen has forged trusted relationships with key government stakeholders, industry leaders, and the global software engineering community.

Through focused research and the application of improved tools, technology, and practices for more than 50 government entities and industry partners, the SEI advances the state of the practice in software engineering and cybersecurity locally, nationally, and internationally.

"It is an honor to be selected for this award," said Nielsen. "It recognizes the impact and achievement of the men and women of the SEI on critical software systems across our nation and around the world."

Awards will be presented at an event on April 24.

About the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute
The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) is a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense and operated by Carnegie Mellon University. The SEI helps organizations make measurable improvements in their software engineering capabilities by providing technical leadership to advance the practice of software engineering. For more information, visit the SEI website at http://www.sei.cmu.edu.

SOURCE Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute