Drew Paine is a Principal Product Experience Architect in the Scientific Data Division (SciData) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). His work is driven by continued curiosity in the ways people collaborate to do complex work across computing ecosystems. This has primarily resulted in a focus on how scientists do research via software as a core scientific instrument and resource. This is essential as autonomous and agentic systems augment the varied arrangements of humans doing science today.
He completed his PhD in Human Centered Design & Engineering (HCDE) at the University of Washington in 2016. He worked with Dr. Charlotte P. Lee in the Computer Supported Collaboration Laboratory (CSC Lab) with a dissertation studying the software infrastructure work of a radio cosmology research group. Prior to his PhD he earned a BS in Software Engineering from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology (RHIT). Since his PhD he has conducted user experience research in the SciData UX group at LBNL, as well as a brief stint at Google Cloud in Cloud Capacity supporting global top-50 customers.
Currently, Paine leads a variety of product and user experience research (UXR) and product management (PdM) efforts, including: work on the STRUDEL project building usable scientific web app resources; product and user experience for the Department of Energy High Performance Data Facility (HPDF); and the Secure Use of AI effort within Trusted CI the NSF Cybersecurity Center of Excellence guiding higher education and cyberinfrastructure operators in the safe adoption and use of AI systems.
Dr. Paine advocates for improving user and developer experiences in scientific software infrastructure efforts so that research work can be accomplished in a more reliable, productive, and effective manner as an active member of multiple communities. These include Better Scientific Software (BSSw), The United States Research Software Engineer Association (US-RSE), and the Consortium for the Advancement of Scientific Software (CASS).