Reid HolmesView profile
Professor
Reid Holmes is a Professor in the Software Practices Lab at the University of British Columbia's Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Science. With over 15 years of academic experience, he has progressed from Assistant Professor at the University of Waterloo (2010-2015) to Associate Professor (2015-2022) and now full Professor (2022-present) at UBC. His research spans multiple dimensions of software engineering with a strong emphasis on the human aspects of development. Dr. Holmes' research interests focus on understanding the problems software engineers encounter when creating and evolving software systems. His work examines software testing and validation, source code reuse, code search, context-sensitive example location, API understanding, speculative analysis, code review, and team awareness. He believes that by better understanding how people create, explore, evolve, and reason about software systems, we can enhance developers' effectiveness and improve software quality. His research is characterized by its practical application to real-world software development challenges. His recent publications demonstrate a consistent focus on improving developer productivity through better tools and understanding of developer behavior. The publications reveal a trajectory from traditional software engineering topics toward newer areas involving AI-assisted development, with particular attention to how generative AI affects workflow and collaboration. His work consistently bridges theoretical software engineering concepts with practical developer experience considerations. ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award (multiple times) FSE 2024 Most Impactful Paper Award 2024 ICSE Most Influential Paper Award Winner of the 2008 MSR Mining Challenge As an educator and mentor, Dr. Holmes has supervised numerous graduate students who have gone on to successful careers in academia and industry. He has served on program committees for major software engineering conferences including ICSE, FSE, and MSR, and has been an Associate Editor for TSE since 2016. His work on developer tools like CodeShovel, Devy, and Baker demonstrates his commitment to creating practical solutions that address real developer pain points.









