Zohreh Sharafi

I am an Assistant Professor of Software Engineering in the Department of Computer and Software Engineering (GIGL) at Polytechnique Montréal.

My research focuses on the human aspects of software engineering, with three main lines of work: developers’ problem-solving strategies, creativity in software development, and trust in software engineering tools and processes. I study how developers understand problems, make decisions, generate solutions, and interact with tools, including AI-supported systems.

I am particularly interested in how human factors, such as gender, experience, and cognitive processes, shape software development practices. Through this work, I aim to support the design of software engineering tools and practices that are more effective, inclusive, creative, and trustworthy for diverse developer populations.

Previously, I was a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where I worked with Dr. Westley Weimer. I was also awarded the prestigious NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship.

My earlier work investigated the impact of visualization techniques on program comprehension, requirements traceability, and model-driven development in software engineering, as well as global image registration methods in computer vision.

Before academia, I worked as a software engineer at Morgan Stanley, contributing to the firm’s flagship electronic trading platform for listed securities. I also served as the principal architect of SURF, a market data simulator designed to enhance debugging and performance testing processes.

I earned my Ph.D. in Software Engineering from Polytechnique Montréal under the supervision of Dr. Giuliano Antoniol and Dr. Yann-Gaël Guéhéneuc. My dissertation focused on how different types of visualizations affect program comprehension and how gender can influence this process. You can read my thesis here.

Born and raised in Tehran, I enjoy living in dynamic, multicultural cities. I have had the pleasure of calling New York, Ann Arbor, and now Montréal home.