Hello! I am a third-year PhD candidate at Northwestern University in the Technology and Social Behavior program, a dual PhD program in Computer Science and Communication Studies. I am advised by Aaron Shaw and Darren Gergle as a member of the Community Data Science Collective and the CollabLab.
I have two primary research interests: developer collaboration in free and open source software projects and ecological validity in code generation benchmarks. In both areas of work, I am interested in how software engineering practices inform and reflect project decision making, security risks, and contributor agency. I have primarily used quantitative and computational methods in my research; specifically those in natural language processing. My work draws from research in software engineering, computer-supported collaborative work (CSCW), and organizational sociology. For a full list of my publications, please check out Google Scholar or email me for a copy of my CV.
You can reach me by email at gaughan [at] u.northwestern.edu. You can also find me on github or mastodon.