Phillip Merlin Drews, Ph.D. né Uesbeck

I'm Merlin and I'm all about data-based decision-making. I have conducted empirical, human-centered programming language usability research in general and polyglot programming research specifically. I completed my Ph.D. at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in December 2019. I also just changed my last name to my wife's, so most stuff refers to my old name.

Interests

Other than my previous research, I'm also always interested in learning more! Both on a research and practical level. Some of my current interests are listed below. Feel free to contact me about any of those.

• Machine learning and AI
• Privacy-preserving computation
• Data Engineering
• Implementing real-life evidence-based software engineering
• The game of Go
• Playing the Ukulele

Research

My research focused on using human-centered, empirical methods. Meaning that I recruited programmers and sat them down in front of pre-prepared tasks in controlled environments to compare the outcomes. This all had the goal to make programming easier for programmers by improving programming language design and/or giving recommendations on how programming practice might be improved. This work is important because gathering data on how programming languages are used is still rare and the humans are vital to how software is developed. More info can be found here.

As part of this research, and generally my work during my time at UNLV, I helped work on the Quorum programming language together with my great colleagues at the Software Engineering and Media Lab. Quorum is an evidence-based programming language. I recommend taking a look at the website. Most of my research was motivated to help make decisions to inform Quorum design.

In my dissertation, I worked on researching polyglot programming. Or more specifically: I wondered what happens when developers switch between two programming languages in different contexts. I'll hold off on giving the details here until I can publish the results.

Publications

• Rafalski, T., Uesbeck, P. M., Panks-Meloney, C., Daleiden, P., Allee, W., Mcnamara, A., & Stefik, A. (2019, July). A Randomized Controlled Trial on the Wild Wild West of Scientific Computing with Student Learners. In Proceedings of the 2019 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research (pp. 239-247).

• Uesbeck, P. M., & Stefik, A. (2019). A Randomized Controlled Trial on the Impact of Polyglot Programming in a Database Context. In 9th Workshop on Evaluation and Usability of Programming Languages and Tools (PLATEAU 2018). Schloss Dagstuhl-Leibniz-Zentrum fuer Informatik.

• Dominguez, M., Bernacki, M. L., & Uesbeck, P. M. (2016). Predicting STEM Achievement with Learning Management System Data: Prediction Modeling and a Test of an Early Warning System. In EDM (pp. 589-590).

• Uesbeck, P. M., Stefik, A., Hanenberg, S., Pedersen, J., & Daleiden, P. (2016, May). An empirical study on the impact of C++ lambdas and programmer experience. In Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Software Engineering (pp. 760-771).

Theses

• “On the Human Factors Impact of Polyglot Programming on Programmer Productivity” - Doctoral dissertation. December 2019. Advisor Dr. Andreas Stefik. UNLV.

• “An Empirical Study on the Impact of C++ Lambdas and Programmer Experience” - Master's thesis. May 2016. Advisor Dr. Andreas Stefik. UNLV.

• "On the Influence of Type Names for Generic and Non-Generic Code in Java - An Experimental Evaluation" - Bachelor's thesis. May 2014. Advisor Dr. Stefan Hanenberg. University of Duisburg-Essen.

Awards & Scholarships

• 2018 - Champion of Computer Science Award (Code.org and CSTA)
• 2017 - Marjorie & Victor Kunkel Engineering Scholarship
• 2016 - Roy & Helen Kelsall Engineering Scholarship

Projects

Apart from research I've also done some software development and machine learning work. Here are some selected projects that I've worked on in the past.

• Development of a haptic feedback library for Android 2017 - 2019
  Goal: Development of a library to easily generate complex vibration patterns for android tablets to make it easier for blind and visually impaired students to learn mathematical concepts by representing information through touch.
  My Tasks: Requirements analysis, coordination with stake holders, and development.
  Technologies: Android, Java, Quorum, Netbeans, Git

• Development of a font library 2017 - 2019
  Goal: Design and development of a library to read font files and generate bitmap representations of glyphs to allow for platform independent use of Quorum’s font features.
  My Tasks: Design and development, hand-off to another developer, project management, and mentoring.
  Technologies: Quorum, Java, Git

• Development of web-based experiment platform 2016 - 2019
  Goal: Development of a web-based platform to make running programming experiments more auto- mated and enable easier recruiting of participants.
  My Tasks: Planning and development of new features, configuration of new experiments, development of a prototype of a data analysis backend as well as planning of new data analysis strategies.
  Technologies: PHP, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, JQuery, SQL, MySQL, Git

• Visualization and analysis of experiment results 2015 - 2019
  Goal: Visualization and analysis of results of different experiments for final evaluation and publication.
  My Tasks: Extraction and management of data in files and databases, synchronization of different data sources, statistic analysis, and visualization as well as interpretation of results.
  Technologies: R, ggplot2, SQL, MySQL, Excel

• Creation of a model to predict grades early in a semester Summers 2015 & 2016
  Goal: Creation of a model to predict grades of students in an anatomy class after the first 4 weeks of class. The model was based on behavioral data of the online learning platform and has the goal to reduce dropout numbers in the class by giving students unlikely to achieve the needed grade information on how to improve their learning behavior.
  My Tasks: Participation in Carnegie Mellon LearnLab event in summer 2015, extraction of data from database, preparation of data, comparison of algorithms, presentation of results, creation of views on the data.
  Technologies: RapidMiner, R, ggplot2, Splunk, Excel

• Development of a prototype for a logistics application 2013 - 2014
  Goal: Development of a prototype of a logistics application which simulates transports using Android devices and displays all ongoing transports and connected events on a web dashboard. This was part of a project based class.
  My Tasks: Requirements analysis, software development in a team of three students using scrum method- ology, development of the Android application and of the web dashboard.
  Technologies: Java, Android, Google Maps (Web & Android), HTML, JavaScript, Linux, Apache Web Server

• Development of a web application to manage consultant profiles 2012 - 2014
  Goal: Development of a web application to manage CV information of consultants to make sure the information is up-to-date and to enable the automatic creation of documents from the information. The project also enabled a workflow for managers to check on team members and included automatic reminders to keep the profiles up-to-date.
  My Tasks: Requirements analysis, planning and development of database and software, management of test and production environment including a simple continuous integration environment, rollout for entire company and documenation, and handoff to IT.
  Technologies: Java, Google Web Toolkit, Hibernate ORM, CSS, Firebird DB, Tomcat, Jenkins, SVN, Linux

• Maintenance of a web application to administrate email accounts 2011 - 2013
  Goal: Development of new features and debugging of a web application to administrate accounts of clients and resellers.
  My Tasks: Development of features, development of tests, assisting with server management tasks.
  Technologies: Java, Java Server Faces (JSF), IMAP, LDAP, HTML, CSS, SVN, Linux