Shuah Khan | |
|---|---|
 Khan in 2018 | |
| Born | 1964 (age 61–62) |
| Occupation | Software engineer |
| Employer | Linux Foundation |
| Website | www |
Shuah Khan is an Americansoftware engineer recognized for her contributions to theLinux kernel. In 2019, she became the first femaleLinux Foundation Fellow, joining notable figures such asLinus Torvalds andGreg Kroah-Hartman as the third fellow at the time.[1][2][3]
She was born in 1964 at Ongole, a town in Andhra Pradesh, India. Her father Dr Nayani Ranganayakulu was a veterinary Doctor in AP Government Services. She had her Primary and Secondary Education in remote villages in Government Schools because of her father's frequent transfers. From childhood she was a bright, intelligent and hard working student. After Plus 2, she attended Andhra University Engineering College at Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. She received her B Tech Degree with high marks before moving to the United States to pursue her masters' degree.[1] Khan then obtained a bachelor's degree inelectronic engineering and a master's degree incomputer science fromColorado State University.[3] After completing her education, she worked atBell Labs, followed by 13 years atHewlett Packard Enterprise and 5 years atSamsung.[1][4]
Khan made her first contribution to the Linux kernel in 2011,[1] by adding a newdevice driver for theLED sub-system as part of the Android DriverMainlining effort.[5] Khan has served on the Linux Technical Advisory Board (TAB)[6][1][5] and as chair of the ELISA Project Technical Steering Committee.[7] As of October 2024, she maintains the Kernel Selftest (kselftest) framework, the USB over IP driver, the CPU power monitoring subsystem, and the Virtual Media Controller driver.[8] She has significantly contributed to kselftest, aregression testing suite for the Linux kernel.[9][4]
In the early stages, testing in the kernel was mostly limited tobuild andboot tests. Khan introduced a more comprehensive testing framework to detect regressions earlier, before they could impact users. Her efforts resulted in "kselftest", which enables developers to runsanity tests and ensure the stability of their changes.[9] This framework is now integrated into KernelCI and the 0-day test service.[10] Describing herself as a generalist, she has also worked on the media subsystem by solving shared device resource management problems impacting components of the Media Controller Device Allocator API.[11]
In 2020, Khan provided a "Signed-off-by" tag for a patch recommending inclusive terminology in the Linux kernel.[12] This change was approved and merged byLinus Torvalds.[13][14] The patch advised developers to avoid terms such as "master", "slave", "blacklist", and "whitelist".[12][15] Alternatives such as primary/secondary, denylist/allowlist, and blocklist/passlist are suggested.[13]
Khan has presented several times at the annualLinux Kernel Developers Summit.[9][10][16]As of August 2025, she serves on the Linux kernel Code of Conduct committee. She has been elected by the Linux kernel community to serve the Linux Foundation Technical Advisory Board alongside her fellow kernel fellow. She had served on the Linux Foundation Technical Advisory Board from 2015-2017.
Khan also leads the Linux Foundation Mentorship program and advocates for increasing the participation of women in the kernel community.[1][11]Khan has presented several times at the annual Linux Kernel Developers Summit and is a frequent speaker at Open Source and Linux Kernel conferences.
Signed-off-by: Shuah Khan
Please add my Signed-off-by: Shuah Khan
