Dr. Denae Ford Robinson is a Principal 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 identity groups of software developers in online communities. Her most recent research investigates how to meaningfully engage software developers as they apply AI to their software development process and identify techniques to understand trust in AI-powered software tools and their adoption.
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 been recognized and awarded grants from the National GEM Consortium Fellowship, National Science Foundation, and Microsoft Research.
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/