The Ignite Project (PDF)

Niyousha is a software engineer with a strong and diverse academic background that includes a bachelor's degree in software engineering, a minor in Management and Society, and a certificate in Entrepreneurial Thinking, all earned from the University of Calgary (U of C). Niyousha is a research associate at the Software Engineering Practice and Education (SEPE) Research Group and has published multiple papers on software engineering education. In addition to her academic and research accomplishments, Niyousha has contributed several years towards fostering the tech innovation ecosystem for students as one of the past Presidents of Tech Start UCalgary, a student-driven club focused on software development and entrepreneurship at the UofC. She is a proud recipient of the 2022 Women in Stem Scholarship and actively advocates for her fellow peers pursuing careers in STEM. Niyousha's research interests include software engineering education, software innovation, hackathons, and open-source software.




Yousef is a Ph.D. candidate at the Schulich School of Engineering at the University of Calgary. His career of over 20 years has involved combining the technical aspects of software development with a focus on human interaction, innovation, and continuous learning. Yousef has worked as a software engineer, instructor, trainer, coach, and author, honing his skills and expertise. His research is focused on using process mining to enhance software development processes by combining his expertise in software engineering practices, statistical methods, and machine learning. He aims to explore new insights and perspectives for process improvement by integrating traditional knowledge with cutting-edge data-driven methods. Yousef has published extensively on software requirement engineering, agile, and scrum. His recent publications focus on utilizing machine learning to predict work in progress for both newly formed teams with limited data as well as established