As Muffy Thomas, she obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the University of Stirling, and completed a Doctor of Philosophy in Computational Science at the University of Street Andrews in 1988 under the supervision of Roy Dyckhoff.
From 2012-2015 she was Chief Scientific Advisor to the Scottish Government. She has worked at the University of Glasgow since 1988, and was Dean of in the College of Science and Engineering until 2012. She became Chief Scientific Adviser to the Scottish Government on 1 March 2012.
Previously Calder has served as Chair of the United Kingdom Computing Committee and Chair of the British Computer Society Academy of Computing Committee.
She became Vice-Principal and Head of College of Science and Engineering in 2015. In 2015 she was appointed to the Council of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (Engineering and Physical Sciences Council).
Calder summarises her research interests as "mathematical modelling and automated reasoning for concurrent, communicating systems". Calder published a very influential overview on the feature interaction problem, with more than 300 citations at Google Scholar.
Her research has extended to applying computer science methods to biochemical networks and cell signalling in bioinformatics, resulting in a number of papers.
Muffy was awarded an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in the New Year"s Honours List, 2011. Calder holds fellowships in the Royal Academy of Engineering, Royal Society of Edinburgh, the British Computer Society and the The Institution of Engineering and Technology . Calder was listed as 21st most influential woman in Scotland, 2012, by The Herald.
