Sarah Beecham

My research background

In 2003 I was granted a PhD, from the University of Hertfordshire, in the UK, in recognition of my programme of work entitled “A Requirements-Based Software Process Maturity Model”. I also hold a BSc First Class honours degree in Business Information Systems, validated by Anglia Ruskin University, UK, in 1995. Prior to joining Lero, I worked for nine years as a Research Fellow in Computer Science at several UK universities, and held a technical role at the University of East Anglia for three years. The universities I have worked in include, University of Hertfordshire, The Open University and Brunel University. I also have many years experience in tutoring and supervising PhD, Masters and final year undergraduate students in their research projects.

My research focuses on software processes, research methods and model building, software evolution, Open Source Software development, effort estimation and fault prediction. I have also published widely in the area of Software Engineer motivation. Most recently I studied software process implementation in global software development environments, such as the financial and health related services. I have over 60 publications in refereed journals and conferences, including top tier journals such as IEEE Software, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE) and ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methods (TOSEM) and have published a book chapter. My guest editorship of journal special issues includes the Journal of Knowledge Engineering, Special Issue on Knowledge Engineering in Global Software Development (2012); Transactions on Computing Education – special issue on Global Software Engineering Education; and Information Software Technology (IST) (2017-2018) – special section on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering (EASE) selected papers (2017). I was the Chair at the International Conference in Global Software Engineering (ICGSE 2010) for posters where I also ran a Workshop focussed on Knowledge Engineering in GSD. I am co-chair for the Doctoral Symposium in ICGSE 2013, and was General Chair for EASE in 2016 that was held at the University of Limerick. I am on the Doctoral panel of ICSE 2018.

I am actively involved in the wider research community. I serve on several conference program and conference organisation committees – to include EASE, Profes, ICGSE and Open Source Software (OSS). I am a regular reviewer for journals to include Transactions in Software Engineering, IEEE Software and JSS. I recently served on the Doctoral Panel at Profes 2010 and have given several presentations in the area of Global Software Development, to include demonstrating the Expert System for Global Teaming to industry. I am often invited to give research seminars, see for example: http://www.nuigalway.ie/cisc/site/events/display_event/2078/ and http://crest.cs.ucl.ac.uk/cow/3/