Maria Margaret Klawe (/ˈklɑːveɪ/ KLAH-vay; born 1951) is a Canadian-American computer scientist and served as the fifth president of Harvey Mudd College from 2006[1] to 2023.

She started a second Ph.D., in computer science, at the University of Toronto, but was offered a faculty position there before completing the degree.

There weren't many undergraduate classes at the time so she enrolled in upper-level courses and studied about 16 hours a day to do well.

She spent eight years in industry, serving at IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California, first as a research scientist, then as manager of the Discrete Mathematics Group and manager of the Mathematics and Related Computer Science Department.

[14] In 1997 she was selected as an NSERC Chair for Women in Science and Engineering (CWSE) at the University of British Columbia, one of only five in Canada.

[29] She also served as the president of the Association for Computing Machinery from 2002 to 2004, and in 2004 won the A. Nico Habermann award.

[43] Klawe emphasizes that the introductory courses offered need to be presented in a problem-solving environment, not a competitive one where a few males dominate the conversation.

Klawe believes the "testosterone culture" prevents women from continuing on with CS because the men that know everything scare away anyone who is trying to learn.

Another project she's working on is an online course called MOOC aimed at 10th grade students.