Dr. Sayma Sultana has joined the Laboratory of Software Design at Tulane University as a Postdoctoral Fellow.

September 12, 2025

Dr. Sayma Sultana

She earned her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Wayne State University under the supervision of Dr. Amiangshu Bosu. Her research focuses on identifying and developing interventions to mitigate gender bias among software professionals, bridging Software Engineering, Human-Computer Interaction, and Natural Language Processing.

The software industry, particularly in FLOSS and STEM fields, continues to face challenges with the underrepresentation of women, influenced by gender bias, discrimination, and non-supportive environments, which contribute to higher attrition rates and lost talent.

Dr. Sultana’s work focuses on identifying, quantifying, and mitigating gender biases in software development.

Key Contributions & Research

Gender Bias in Code Reviews: Her study, “Code reviews in open source projects : how do gender biases affect participation and outcomes?”, investigates the influence of contributors’ gender on code review outcomes across 1,010 FLOSS projects. It uses regression models to analyze how gender and related factors impact pull request acceptance, review intervals, and reviewer participation.
Automated Bias Detection Tool: She introduced SGID4SE, an automated tool for detecting gender-biased and misogynistic content in software engineering communications. This tool demonstrates high precision and accuracy through a BERT-based model.

Collectively, these studies provide empirical evidence, resources, and methods to better understand and address gender bias in software engineering.

Publications

Her research has been published in leading venues, including:

EMSE
TOSEM
TSE
ESEM
ASE