Mead spent a significant part of her career at
IBM (1966-1990), in software development and management of large real-time systems, software engineering technology, and software engineering education. She was named a Senior Technical Staff Member at IBM in 1988. Mead’s research at Carnegie Mellon University's
Software Engineering Institute (1990-2018) was primarily in the study of
software engineering and
cybersecurity engineering, particularly software and security
requirements, and the development of
software assurance and software engineering curricula. She was the Principal Investigator and primary developer of the
SQUARE method for security requirements engineering, and led the Software Assurance Curriculum Project, which included the Master of Software Assurance Reference Curriculum recognized by
IEEE and
ACM. At present, her interests are in
threat modelling and
supply chain risk management. == Awards and honors ==