Among other activities, she chaired the Panel on Open Source Software for High End Computing.

[9] She was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1993 for contributions to the theory and practice of compiler construction and for leadership in the computer science community.

[12] In 2009, she was awarded the IEEE John von Neumann Medal for "contributions to programming language design and implementation and for exemplary service to the discipline of computer science".

On Sept. 29, 2011 it was announced[13][14] that she had been chosen to receive the ACM-IEEE-CS Ken Kennedy Award on November 15, 2011 in Seattle at SC11, the international conference on high-performance computing.

[15] Graham is married to professor emeritus Michael A. Harrison of UC Berkeley.