Professor Conte was head of the Department of Computer Sciences from 1962 to 1979 and director of the University Computing Center from 1962 to 1968. Before coming to Purdue, he was manager of the Programming and Analysis Department at TRW Systems from 1956 to 1962 and a professor of mathematics at Wayne State University from 1948 to 1956.

Professor Conte's early research was primarily in the area of numerical analysis and mathematical software. He is co-author of Elementary Numerical Analysis (McGraw-Hill), currently in its third edition. In recent years, his research has centered around software engineering in general and software metrics in particular. He has been deriving and experimentally testing models for software effort estimation and programmer productivity as well as metrics for software complexity.

Professor Conte is a senior scientist in the NSF-sponsored Software Engineering Research Center (SERC), a joint center at Purdue University and at the University of Florida. He is co-author (with H. E. Dunsmore and V. Y. Shen) of Software Engineering Metrics and Models, Benjamin/Cummings Publishing Company, 1986.