A pioneer in object-oriented programming, Liskov's work in programming methodology has affected all aspects of modern computing, including programming languages, object-oriented programming, and software robustness to hacking. She designed CLU, an object-oriented programming language, and Argus, a distributed programming language, among others. Liskov was also the first woman in the United States to receive her PhD from a computer science department.
She has won the Society of Women Engineers' Achievement Award (1996), the IEEE von Neumann Medal (2004), and the ACM's Turing Award (2009). In addition to running the Programming Methodology Group in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT, Liskov has served as an Institute Professor and Associate Provost for Faculty Equity at MIT.