RESEARCH
My current research interests are in inclusive design, studying how diverse software teams can become inclusive so that to build inclusive software. Software is created by people, and for people. Understanding the needs and intentions of its end-users is only the first, difficult step. Many other stakeholders (developers, customers, customer support, management) are involved in software development, and managing their different perspectives and expectations adds to this complexity and makes software design, and its study fascinating. In my work in requirements engineering, I have been interested in how processes of communication and coordination, and their facilitation, most often in online environments, shape software success and stakeholder satisfaction.
Even more puzzling is how these diverse stakeholders can collaborate in teams that are distributed across geography, time zones, and cultural backgrounds. Despite significant challenges in socio-technical coordination, advances in collaboration technologies and processes do allow software teams to be inclusive and productive. My recent work has studied innovation in large-scale collaboration found in software ecosystems, shared understanding of requirements in continuous software engineering, and privacy in technology design. .
Honors and Awards
ECS-CAPI Chair in Inclusive Science, Technology and Engineering (2022-present)
D.L. Parnas Fellow, Lero Software Center (2024-)
Royal Society New Zealand Catalyst: International Leader Award (2018-2022)
Research Visiting Professor, Singapore Management University (2023)
Distinguished Visiting Professor, University of Auckland (2020)
Recent Talks
REconnect: How being a requirements engineer made me a better, yet humble, software
engineer Keynote speaker, International Conference on Requirements Engineering, Valencia, Sep 2025
The Engaged Learner: From Experience to Learning and Impact Keynote speaker, International Conference on Software Engineering and Training (CSEET), Ottawa, 2025
Empathy as Technology. TEDx Victoria, Victoria, Canada, May 2024
Collaborative learning and social impact: Determinants of DEI in Software Engineering (Education) Keynote speaker, Workshop on Gender Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion in Software Engineering, Lisbon, Portugal, April 2024
Collaboration or, wait -- diversity at large scale: How inclusive developers can engineer software for diverse end-users Keynote Speaker, Workshop on Software Engineering for Systems-of-Systems and Software Ecosystems (SESoS 2024), Lisbon, Portugal, April 2024
The Inclusive Developer: Perspectives and Considerations for Building Inclusive Software Keynote speaker, Conference on Human Aspects in Software Engineering, ICSE 2023
Qualitative, quantitative and mixed-method approaches to research Distinguished speaker, Doctoral Symposium, International Conference on Requirements Engineering: Foundations for Software Quality (REFSQ) 2021
Co-innovation and Risk Sharing in Software Ecosystems Public Lecture, Distinguished Visiting Professor, University of Auckland, New Zealand (2020)
Never Alone: How collaboration has changed and changed software development Keynote, Distinguised Speaker Series, University of California, Irvine (2019)
Selected Publications
Beyond Diversity: Computing for Inclusive SoftwareK. Devathasan, N. Arony and D. Damian, in D. Damian, et al. (Eds) Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in Software Engineering. : 200-210. In Press, Apress, 2024
Software Engineering through Community Engaged Learning and an Inclusive Network, Arony, N., Devathasan, K. and Damian, D. Damian, D. et al (Eds.):. Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in Software Engineering. : 10-17., 2024
Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in Software Engineering, APress, D. Damian, K. Blincoe, D. Robinson, A. Serebrenik and Z. Masood (Eds.) APress, 2023
Can Technology and Privacy co-exist in a Pandemic? Zane Li, Vishaka Phusamruat, Tony Clear, Daniela Damian, in V. Ramraj (Ed.), Covid-19 in Asia, Oxford University Press, 2021
Challenges and Strategies for managing requirements selection in software ecosystems, Daniela Damian, Johan Linaker, David Jonhson, Tony Clear and Kelly Blincoe, IEEE Software, to appear, 2021
Archetypes of Delay: An Analysis of Online Developer Conversations on delayed Work Items in IBM Jazz Abdou Salaou, Daniela Damian, Casper Lassenius, Dragos Voda, Pierre Gancarski, Information Software Technology, 2021
Continuously managing non-functional requirements: Opportunities and Challenges in Practice Colin Werner,, Zane Li, Derek Lowlind, Omar Elazhary, Neil Ernst and Daniela Damian, Transactions on Software Engineering, To appear, 2021
A method for Analyzing Stakeholders’’ Influence on an Open Source Software Ecosystem’s Requirements and Engineering Process Johan Linaker, Bjorn Regnell, Daniela Damian, Requirements Engineering, 2020
A Community Strategy Framework – How to obtain influence on requirements in meritocratic open source software communities? Johan Linåker, Bjorn Regnell, and Daniela Damian, Information & Software Technology, 2019
High-level Software Requirements and Iteration Changes: A Predictive Mode Kelly Blincoe, Ali Dehghan, Abdou Salaou, Neal, A. and Daniela Damian, Empirical Software Engineering, 2018
The evolution of requirements practices in software startups Catarina Grahla, Daniela Damian, Tony Wasserman, Miguel Goulao and Jorge Araujo, International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), , 2018
How best to teach Global Software Engineering? Sarah Beecham, Tony Clear, Daniela Damian, John Barr, Walter Scacchi, John Noll, IEEE Software, 2017
Continuous Clarification and Emergent Requirements Flows in Open-Commercial Software Ecosystems Eric Knauss, Amina Yussuf, Kelly Blincoe, Daniela Damian, and Alessia Knauss, Requirements Engineering, 2017
The Promises and Perils of Mining GitHub (Extended Version) Eirini Kalliamvakou, Georgios Gousios, Kelly Blincoe, Leif Singer, Daniel German, and Daniela Damian, Empirical Software Engineering, 2016
The sky is not the limit: multitasking across GitHub projects, Bogdan Vasilescu, Kelly Blincoe, Qi Xuan, Cassey Casalnuovo, Daniela Damian, Prem Devanbu, Vladimir Filkov, International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), 2016
Open Source-Style Collaborative Development Practices in Commercial Projects, Using GitHub, Eirini Kalliamvakou, Daniela Damian, Kelly Blincoe, Leif Singer and Daniel German, International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), 2015
Ecosystems in GitHub and a Method for Ecosystem Identification using Reference Coupling, Kelly Blincoe, Francis Harrison, and Daniela Damian, Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR), 2015
Methodology and culture: drivers of mediocrity in software engineering?, Marian Petre, and Daniela Damian, ACM SIGSOFT International Conference on Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE), Awarded SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award, 2014
The role of domain knowledge and hierarchical control structures in socio-technical coordination, Daniela Damian, Remko Helms, Irwin Kwan, Sabrina Marczak, and Benjamin Koelewijn, International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), 2013
To talk or not to talk: factors that influence communication around changesets, Adrian Schroeter,, Jorge Aranda and Daniela Damian, ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), , 2012
Matching methods to questions in empirical software engineering, Janice Singer, Steve Easterbrook, Margaret-Anne. Storey, and Daniela Damian, Advanced Topics in Empirical Software Engineering, Springer Verlag, J. Singer, F. Shull, and D. Sjoberg (Eds.), Springer, 2007
Using different communication media in requirements negotiation, Daniela Damian (Herlea), Armin Eberlein, Mildred Shaw, and Brian Gaines, IEEE Software, 2000