Radia Perlman, American software designer and network engineer
Radia Joy Perlman (born December 18, 1951) is an American computer programmer and network engineer. She is most famous for her invention of the spanning-tree protocol (STP), which is fundamental to the operation of network bridges, while working for Digital Equipment Corporation. She also made large contributions to many other areas of network design and standardization, such as link-state routing protocols.
Perlman was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2015 for contributions to Internet routing and bridging protocols.More recently she has invented the TRILL protocol to correct some of the shortcomings of spanning-trees. She is currently employed by Dell EMC.