Brittany Johnson-Matthews

Brittany Johnson-Matthews has devoted her research career to the synergy between human needs and technical advancements through human-centric exploration, development, and evaluation of technologies.

Johnson-Matthews, best known for her work on improving program analysis tools for use in practice, has an extensive background in empirical research methods. Rather than relying on the “magic of technology” to decide what advances to make, she asks the important question “When and why should we make this change?” Collaborating with researchers from all over the world in academia and industry, she conducts interdisciplinary research that spans software engineering, human-computer interaction, and machine learning domains.

Before joining George Mason University, Johnson-Matthews was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. During her time as a postdoc, she developed a new testing technique, called Causal Testing, that supports developers in understanding the cause of unexpected behavior in their software. Her work on Causal Testing won an ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Artifact Award at the 2020 International Conference on Software Engineering. During her time at UMass, she also contributed to research that aims to support ethical software development, an area she plans to continue to work in here at George Mason.

Along with a passion for research, she also has a passion for mentoring students both inside and outside the classroom. She has extensive experience working with students of all ages, from teaching computer science to non-computer science audiences to encouraging others to find their passion and follow their dreams (without losing themselves in the process). 

Degrees

• PhD, Computer Science, North Carolina State University
• Bachelor of Arts, Computer Science, College of Charleston