Crista Lopes is a Professor of Informatics in the School of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. Her research focuses on software engineering for large-scale data and systems. Early in her career, she was a founding member of the team at Xerox PARC that developed Aspect-Oriented Programming. Along with her research program, she is also a prolific software developer. Her open source contributions include being one of the core developers of OpenSimulator, a virtual world server. She is also a founder and consultant of Encitra, a company specializing in online virtual reality for early-stage sustainable urban redevelopment projects. She has a PhD from Northeastern University, and MS and BS degrees from Instituto Superior Tecnico in Portugal. She is the recipient of several National Science Foundation grants, including a prestigious CAREER Award. She claims to be the only person in the world who is both an ACM Distinguished Scientist and Ohloh Kudos Rank 9.