Daniel Alencar da Costa is a Senior Lecturer in the Information Science Department at the University of Otago, New Zealand, having started his employment with the department in 2019. Daniel is originally from Belém, Brazil, which is a capital near the Amazon Forest where he obtained his Bachelor’s in Information Technology. Daniel travelled to the northeast of Brazil to complete his M.Sc. (2012) and his PhD in Computer Science (2017) at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN). During his PhD, Daniel was a visiting researcher at Queen’s University, Canada, where he also became a postdoctoral fellow after obtaining his PhD (from 2017 to 2018).
Daniel believes software engineering should be as reliable and painless as possible, which leads him to research and improve the debugging, packaging, and releasing processes of software development. His most recent contributions revolve around the area of Continuous Integration and Defect Prediction, leading to publications in top software engineering venues, such as the IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE), ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM), and Empirical Software Engineering Journal (EMSE). More information about his research can be found on his personal website: https://danielcalencar.github.io
In terms of teaching, Daniel is currently engaged with the development of a GameDev pathway at the University of Otago. He is the coordinator of the Centre of Digital Excellence (CODE) curriculum development committee and the coordinator of the Pervasive Game Development paper. He is also involved in the teaching of papers related to software engineering & programming and information assurance & security. Outside of work, Daniel enjoys bird watching, hiking, working out, writing, reading (especially historical fiction), gaming and meeting new people.
