Denae Ford Robinson is a senior researcher at Microsoft Research in
the SAINTes group and an affiliate assistant professor in the Human
Centered Design and Engineering Department at the University of
Washington. Her research lies at the intersection of Human-Computer
Interaction and Software Engineering. In her work she identifies and
dismantles cognitive and social barriers by designing mechanisms to
support software developer participation in online socio-technical
ecosystems. She is best known for her research on just-in-time
mentorship as a mode to empower welcoming engagement in collaborative
Q&A for online programming communities including open-source
software and work to empower marginalized software developers in online
communities.
She received her B.S. and M.S. in computer science from North
Carolina State University. She also received her Ph.D. in computer
science and graduate minor in cognitive science from North Carolina
State University. She is also a recipient of the National GEM Consortium
Fellowship, National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship,
and Microsoft Research Ph.D.Fellowship.
Her research publications can be found under her pen name ‘Denae
Ford’. More information about her latest research can be found on her
website: http://denaeford.me/