Developer Success Summit Series

As the VP of Research Insights and the Director of the Developer Success Lab at Pluralsight, Cat Hicks studies the science of how developer teams learn and thrive. Cat is a social science leader in tech with expertise leading applied research teams to explore complex areas of human behavior, empirical intervention, and evidence science. Cat serves on the Advisory Council of the University of San Diego Center for Digital Civil Society, as a research affiliate in STEM education research at UC San Diego, and as an advocate for increasing education access. She holds a Ph.D. in Quantitative Experimental Psychology from UC San Diego, was an inaugural Fellow in the UC San Diego Design Lab, and has led research at organizations such as Google and Khan Academy.

Marian Petre ‘picks the brains’ of expert software developers to understand what makes them expert. She has spent decades studying how they reason and communicate about design and problem solving. Her research is grounded in empirical studies of professionals in industry and draws on cognitive and social theory. By observing, talking to, and working with hundreds of professional software developers in organisations ranging from start-ups to the world’s major software companies, she exposes actionable insights into the thinking that distinguishes high-performing teams. Petre is an Emeritus Professor at the Open University (UK) and a Visiting Distinguished Professor at University of California, Irvine. Her most recent book is "Software Design Decoded" (MIT Press), and she received a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award in recognition of her work.

Dr. Margaret-Anne Storey is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Victoria. She holds a Canada Research Chair in Human and Social Aspects of Software Engineering. Dr. Storey’s research goal is to understand how technology can help people explore, understand, and share complex information and knowledge. She evaluates and applies techniques from knowledge engineering, social software, and visual interface design to applications such as collaborative software development, program comprehension, biomedical ontology development, and learning in Web-based environments. Dr. Storey currently consults with Microsoft to improve developer productivity.

Abi Noda is the founder and CEO of DX, the world’s first developer experience management platform, helping organizations measure and improve top drivers of developer productivity and engagement. DX is designed by leading software engineering researchers, providing science-backed metrics, workflows, and education that empower teams to improve.