About me

I am currently a principal researcher at Microsoft Research working on Empirical Software Engineering as part of the Research in Software Engineering RiSE group. I received my bachelor’s degree in CS from Brigham Young University and my Ph.D. in Computer Science from UC Davis, studying empirical software engineering in the DECAL group under my advisor Prem Devanbu. I’m currently working on ways to use data to guide decisions of stakeholders in large software projects.

I currently work with Thomas Zimmermann, Denae Ford, and Nachi Nagappan in the Empirical Software Engineering (ESE) group at Microsoft Research.

For a complete list of publications, positions held, etc., please see my CV.

The following can be used as my bio for publications, speaking engagements, etc.

Christian Bird is a principal researcher in the Empirical Software Engineering group at Microsoft Research. He is primarily interested in the relationship between software design, social dynamics, and processes in large development projects and in developing tools and techniques to help software teams. He has studied software development both quantitatively and qualitatively at Microsoft, IBM, and in the Open Source realm. Most recently his work has focused on code review, use of branching in source code repositories, and release engineering. He has published in the top Software Engineering venues, has received four ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished papers, and his research has been highlighted in the Communications of the ACM. Christian is an ACM Distinguished Scientist, received B.S. from Brigham Young University and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis.