Dr. Denae Ford Robinson is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research in the Inclusive Futures 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 previous 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 her work to empower marginalized identity groups of software developers in online communities.
Her most recent research investigates how to meaningfully engage knowledge workers as they apply AI to their standard work processes, focusing on techniques to understand trust in AI-powered software tools and their adoption. Building on this foundation, she is currently exploring mimetic agents-—AI systems that can extend human behaviors and communication patterns-—and how they influence collaboration, identity, and knowledge work. She also examines how individuals and organizations can address and navigate the psychological harms of AI tools, developing self-advocacy strategies and design frameworks that promote well-being in AI-mediated workplaces.
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. Her research has received recoginition from the National GEM Consortium, National Science Foundation, Microsoft Research, and the White House of Office of Science Technology and Policy, to name a few. She has also been honored as a BlackComputeHER Rising Star and has been named a Young Research Fellow by the Heidelberg Laureate Forum.
She remains committed to empowering science through her service. Specifically, she has organized CHI Mentoring Workshops at the ACM CHI Conference and has organized Equity Inclusion and Belonging events at ACM SIGSOFT research conferences. During her time at Microsoft she has co-founded the Black Researchers @ Microsoft Research Group—which she still co-leads today. Likewise, she remains active in the Women Researchers at Microsoft group where she mentors rising researchers in their Post-PhD careers.
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/