Igor Steinmacher, PhD
Associate Professor · Northern Arizona University
Associate Director for Graduate Programs and Academic Affairs · SICCS
About
I am an Associate Professor at Northern Arizona University, where I wear several hats: I lead a research group, teach across the computing curriculum, run graduate and academic affairs for my school, supervise and teach students in different areas.
Research. I co-lead the RESHAPE Lab with Marco Gerosa, studying the sustainability of open source software and how AI reshapes software development. Our work is funded by the NSF, TRIF/NAU, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and has earned multiple Distinguished Paper and Best Paper awards.
Teaching & curriculum. I have taught in higher education since 2005, from introductory programming to graduate research methods, in undergraduate and graduate level. Recently, I chaired the committee that designed NAU's new interdisciplinary Bachelor of Science in Artificial Intelligence, launching Fall 2026.
Academic leadership. As Associate Director for Graduate Programs and Academic Affairs at SICCS, I help steer graduate education, academic coordination with undergraduate majors, and scheduling across eight degree programs. I also serve the research community as a conference chair, reviewer, editorial board member, and mentor.
// every square is a contribution — My research seeks to understand why and how they happen.
Research
Open Source Sustainability
Barriers faced by newcomers, mentoring, maintainer issues, governance, and forecasting developer inactivity.
AI in software development
How to use AI agents to support software development, including agents to help newcomers, understanding developers' use of generative AI, and use of AI to support empirical SE research.
Learning through open source
Gamified environments that scaffold student contributions, active learning, and bridges between universities and OSS communities.
- Ossdoorway: A Gamified Environment to Scaffold Student Contributions to Open Source Software CSEE&T 2025
- Barriers and Self-Efficacy: A Large-Scale Study on the Impact of OSS Courses on Student Perceptions ITiCSE 2023
- Training software engineers using open-source software: the students' perspective ICSE-SEET 2019
Funded Projects
Current
- CommUnityBuddy — a conversational agent supporting open source contributors — Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, 2026–current, lead PI, USD 100K.
- NSF POSE: expanding the data.table ecosystem — for efficient big data manipulation in R — 2023–2027, lead PI, USD 731K, with Marco Gerosa and Toby Hocking.
- NSF HSI: a learning environment for an open-source contribution model — OSS-Doorway — 2023–2027, lead PI, USD 498K, with Marco Gerosa.
- NSF RETTL: learning software engineering by contributing to real projects with chatbot assistance — 2023–2027, co-PI, USD 562K, with Marco Gerosa (PI).
- NSF IUSE: scaffolding computational thinking in introductory CS through a conversational agent — SIGIL — 2023–2026, lead PI, USD 405K, with Marco Gerosa.
Completed
- NSF CHS: Gender-Inclusive Open Source through Gender-Inclusive Tools — 2019–2023, lead PI, USD 528K.
- Fostering open source communities by supporting newcomer developers — FAPESP / MCTI CGI.br (Brazil), 2017, lead PI, ~BRL 230K, with Igor Wiese and Ivanilton Polato.
Recent Highlights
Awards
- 2026 ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper — CHASE@ICSE 2026: “Governance in Practice: How Open Source Projects Define and Document Roles”
- 2026 NAU Award for Graduate Research Mentorship — Northern Arizona University Research and Creative Activity Awards
- 2025 NAU Award for Most Promising New Research Scholar — Northern Arizona University
Keynotes, talks & panels
- 2026 Keynote, ICSE 2026 Doctoral Symposium (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
- 2026 Panelist, ICSE 2026 Panels and Special Sessions: “SE.next: Raising the Agentic Engineer” (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
Teaching
I have taught in higher education since 2005, at undergraduate and graduate levels (software engineering, programming foundations, research methods, algorithms, human-computer interaction, capstone, and open source development). I chaired the proposal committee for NAU's new Bachelor of Science in Artificial Intelligence, an interdisciplinary degree starting Fall 2026. My CS-education research (gamified OSS learning, active learning) feeds directly back into the classroom.
Students
I have supervised eleven PhD students to completion as principal supervisor or co-supervisor — including Bianca Trinkenreich, whose dissertation received the 2024 ACM SIGSOFT Outstanding Dissertation Award.
Current PhD students
- Pedro A. Oliveira (NAU, 2024–current) — open source governance as a foundation for project sustainability
- Jacob McAuley Penney (NAU, 2023–current) — LLMs to support computational thinking and developer learning
- Morgan Nicholson (NAU, 2025–current) — conversational agents in developer support
PhD and M.Sc. alumni, and information for prospective students →
Contact
Email: igor.steinmacher@nau.edu
School of Informatics, Computing and Cyber Systems
Northern Arizona University — Flagstaff, AZ, USA