The objective of the Rutherford Discovery Fellowships is to draw in, maintain, and cultivate New Zealand’s brightest researchers in the early to mid-stages of their careers, while supporting their professional growth and enabling them to establish a foundation for future research leadership.
As part of her Rutherford Discovery Fellowship, Dr. Blincoe will be exploring ways to develop more inclusive software practices and tools that can help to retain women in the field of software engineering.
Dr. Blincoe plans to investigate the reasons behind low satisfaction and high turnover of women in the software engineering industry through a five-year longitudinal study, which will involve 200 participants. She will use questionnaires, interviews, and lab experiments to identify the factors that cause women to leave the industry and to develop gender-inclusive software engineering tools and practices based on the findings. The data from these studies will inform tools and practices to foster more gender inclusivity, and these tools and practices will be validated in follow-up experiments.
For more information about the project, check out Kelly’s biography and research summary.
Joining SI^NZ If you are an active software engineering researcher based in New Zealand and would like to join or know more about SI^NZ, please contact our Treasurer and Membership Officer, Valerio Terragni or the local executive member at your university.