Courtney Miller

Bio

I'm a 5th year Ph.D. candidate in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University co-advised by Bogdan Vasilescu and Christian Kästner. Prior to joining CMU, I graduated from New College of Florida with my BA in Computer Science and Statistics with Honors. My primary research interests are the intersection of AI-powered developer tools and software supply chain sustainability and security, open source ecosystems, empirical software engineering research, and developer productivity, coordination, and communication. I am an NSF GRFP Fellow and have three ACM Distinguished Paper Awards at premier venues in software engineering. For infomation about me and my work check out my website!

**NOTICE** I am on the tenure track faculty and industry research scientist job markets (2025-26) seeking positions in Computer Science, Information Science, and related areas. **NOTICE**

Education

I'm a 5th year Ph.D. candidate in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University co-advised by Bogdan Vasilescu and Christian Kästner. Prior to joining CMU, I graduated from New College of Florida with my BA in Computer Science and Statistics with Honors.

Research

My primary research interests are the intersection of AI-powered developer tools and software supply chain sustainability and security, open source ecosystems, empirical software engineering research, and developer productivity, coordination, and communication.

In my work, I use a multi-dimensional empirical approach to understand and improve the socio-technical challenges developers face within software development and maintenance processes. More specifically, I am passionate about supporting developers and teams by designing mixed-methods research protocols combining human-centered qualitative techniques with large-scale data-driven statistical analysis, modeling, and visualization to develop insights and inform the design of custom solutions.

Projects

See my website for up to date information on my ongoing projects :)

Publications

Below is a list of my featured publications:
For a complete list of my publications, check out my website!

“Maybe We Need Some More Examples:” Individual and Team Drivers of Developer GenAI Tool Use. Courtney Miller, Rudrajit Choudhuri, Mara Ulloa, Sankeerti Haniyur, Robert DeLine, Margaret-Anne Storey, Emerson Murphy-Hill, Christian Bird, Jenna L. Butler. Currently Under Review, 2026.

Designing Abandabot: When Does Open Source Dependency Abandonment Matter? Courtney Miller*, Hao He*, Weigen Chen, Elizabeth Lin, Chenyang Yang, Bogdan Vasilescu, Christian Kästner. IEEE/ACM International Conference of Software Engineering (ICSE), 2026. *Both authors contributed equally to this research

Understanding the Response to Open-Source Dependency Abandonment in the npm Ecosystem. Courtney Miller, Mahmoud Jahanshahi, Audris Mockus, Bogdan Vasilescu, Christian Kästner. IEEE/ACM International Conference of Software Engineering (ICSE), 2025. ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award

"We Feel Like We're Winging It:" A Study on Navigating Open-Source Dependency Abandonment. Courtney Miller, Christian Kästner, Bogdan Vasilescu. ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE), 2023.

"Did You Miss My Comment or What?" Understanding Toxicity in Open Source Discussions. Courtney Miller, Sophie Cohen, Daniel Klug, Bogdan Vasilescu, Christian Kästner. IEEE/ACM International Conference of Software Engineering (ICSE), 2022. ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award


"How Was Your Weekend?" Software Development Teams Working From Home During COVID-19. Courtney Miller, Paige Rodeghero, Margaret-Anne Storey, Denae Ford, Thomas Zimmermann. IEEE/ACM International Conference of Software Engineering (ICSE), 2021. ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award

Why Do People Give Up FLOSSing? A Study of Contributor Disengagement in Open Source. Courtney Miller, David Gray Widder, Christian Kästner, Bogdan Vasilescu. IFIP International Conference on Open Source Systems (OSS), 2019.