Keynote Speakers
Daniela Damian
Daniela Damian is a Professor of Software Engineering and the ECS-CAPI Chair in Inclusive Science, Technology, and Engineering at the University of Victoria. Along the years, together with her students, she led empirical research that studied the human and social aspects of requirements engineering and software development, with a special focus on teamwork, remote communication, and collaboration. She is the founder and Director of the INSPIRE:STEM for Social Impact Program at the University of Victoria, where diverse teams engage in community-driven, experiential-learning science and engineering projects for societal impact. Daniela served as Program Chair for major Software Engineering conferences and in particular, was the Co-Chair of the inaugural conference on Software Engineering in Society in 2014, RE 2019 and ICSE 2022; she has served on the editorial boards of Transactions on Software Engineering, and is serving on the Advisory Board at the Empirical Software Engineering Journal. Daniela was the recipient of the 2019 Faculty of Engineering Teaching Award and of the 2020 Provost's REACH Award for Excellence in Teaching for Experiential Learning. In 2019 she received the Royal Society New Zealand Catalyst: International Leader Award, and in 2024, she became a Lero Parnas Fellow. Daniela is an ACM Distinguished Speaker and was recently honored with the 2026 SIGSOFT Influential Educator Award. Read more about her projects and research at danieladamian.ca, and listen to her TEDxVictoria talk on her humble take on the power of empathy in tech design for a diverse, kinder world. She can be contacted at danielad@uvic.ca.
Keynote: Human connection: The essential compass to innovating technologies that matter
Eduardo Guerra
Eduardo Guerra is a researcher at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy. He previously spent seven years at the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE) and served as a lecturer at the Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica (ITA). His research can be broadly described as an effort to “find better ways to develop software.” This includes the study of software patterns, programming approaches, and development processes that support effective and sustainable teamwork. Agile principles form the core foundation of his work, with recent research focusing on how uncertainty management can be applied to software architecture design. In the area of programming techniques, he has conducted several studies on the use of metadata and code annotations as means to improve adaptability and enhance code quality. Beyond academia, Eduardo is also a board game designer, cosplayer, seasoned Java dinosaur, judoka, and the host of the Hillside Patterncast.
Keynote: Uncertainty in the Future of Agile Software Architecture
Paulo Caroli
Paulo Caroli is the creator of the Lean Inception methodology and a renowned author, keynote speaker, and practitioner in product and organizational design. With over 30 years of experience, he has helped teams and organizations around the world align strategy, discovery, and delivery in complex environments. He is the author of Lean Inception, Team OKR in Action, Fun Retrospectives, Sprint by Sprint, and Product Backlog Building, and is widely recognized for translating strategy into practical, collaborative ways of working. Through his workshops, keynotes, and advisory work, Paulo helps organizations turn strategy into results by creating clarity and alignment — connecting leadership, teams, and technology so modern, product-oriented organizations can make better decisions and deliver real impact.
Keynote: From Speed to Direction: Agile in the Age of AI
Rick Kazman
Rick Kazman is the Danny and Elsa Lui Distinguished Professor of Information Technology Management at the University of Hawaii. His research interests are software architecture, design and analysis tools, and technical debt. Kazman has helped create several influential methods and tools for design analysis, including the Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method and the DV8 and Titan tools. He is the author of over 300 publications, three patents and ten books, including Software Design: The Art and the Craft, Software Architecture in Practice, Technical Debt: How to Find It and Fix It, and Designing Software Architectures: A Practical Approach. His methods and tools have been adopted by many Fortune 1000 companies and his work has been cited over 32,000 times, according to Google Scholar. He is currently a member of the IEEE Computer Society's Board of Governors. Kazman received a B.A. (English/Music) and M.Math (Computer Science) from the University of Waterloo, an M.A. (English) from York University, and a Ph.D. (Computational Linguistics) from Carnegie Mellon University. How he ever became a software engineering researcher is anybody's guess. When not doing research, Kazman may be found cycling, singing acapella music, playing the piano, gardening, or playing pickleball.
