Kari Nies is a Research Programmer/Analyst in the Institute for Software Research affiliated with the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. She received a Bachelors degree in 1987 from the Department of Information and Computer Science at the UCI (Phi Beta Kappa, Magna Cum Laude). She also received an M.S. in Information Computer Science in 1991 from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Massachusets, Amherst under Professor Lori Clarke. Her Masters thesis was on a compact petri net representation for concurrent programs. She has worked in the areas of language processing, concurrent sofware analysis, and user interface. Her current interests are in the areas of architecture-based software development - in particular, in dyamic architecture-based adaptation, self-adapting software, and software architectures that support security - as well as in security awareness and visualizations for system security.