Bonita Sharif

Bonita Sharif is an Associate Professor in the School of Computing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), where she has directed the Software Engineering Research and Empirical Studies Lab since 2018. Her research bridges software engineering, eye tracking, and human factors, with over 80 refereed publications and leadership roles in conferences like VISSOFT and ETRA.

• Ph.D., Computer Science, Kent State University (2010)
• MS, Computer Science, Kent State University (2003)
• BS, Computer Science, Cyprus College (2000)

Her research interests focus on using eye tracking to understand code comprehension, software traceability, and emotional awareness in development. She has pioneered methodologies for integrating eye movement data into software engineering tasks and developed the iTrace infrastructure for analyzing developer behavior.

Recent publications (2023-2025) explore code readability rules, UML diagram layouts, and developer decision-making via eye tracking. She has also contributed to tools like iTrace-Toolkit for analyzing biometric data and EMIP Toolkit for post-processing eye movement datasets.

Awards include the NSF CAREER and CRI awards. She has served as Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering and ACM Transactions on Computer Education, and chaired conferences like VISSOFT 2016 and ETRA 2018/2019.

Mentoring involves tailored support for graduate and undergraduate students, integrating them into all research phases. She has supervised 19 graduate students and 39 undergraduates, with 43 co-authored papers.