Gregg Rothermel

Gregg Evan Rothermel is an American computer scientist, software engineer and academic. He is a Distinguished University Professor and was the former Head of the Department of Computer Science at North Carolina State University.

Rothermel’s research has focused on software engineering and program analysis, with a particular emphasis on the applications of program analysis techniques to problems in the context of software maintenance and testing, end-user software engineering, and empirical studies. He co-founded the ESQuaReD Laboratory at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, and the Software-Artifact Infrastructure Repository (SIR). He also co-founded the EUSES Consortium, a group of researchers who, with National Science Foundation's support, have led end-user software engineering research.

Rothermel is an IEEE Fellow and an ACM Distinguished Member.

Education Rothermel earned a B.A. in Philosophy from Reed College in 1983, and an M.S. in Computer Science from the State University of New York at Albany in 1986. He then enrolled at Clemson University and received his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science, under the supervision of Mary Jean Harrold, in 1996.

Career Rothermel began his academic career as a teaching assistant of computer science at State University of New York at Albany in 1985. In 1991, he joined Clemson University as a teaching assistant in the Department of Computer Science, and became a Research Assistant the following year. He then held a brief appointment at the Ohio State University as a senior research associate in the Department of Computer and Information Science through 1996, before joining Oregon State University as an assistant professor of Computer Science. In 2001, he was promoted to associate professor at Oregon State. From 2004 through 2018, he served on the faculty of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln as professor and Jensen Chair of Software Engineering. From 2018, he served as professor and head of the Department of Computer Science at North Carolina State University until his retirement on August 1, 2025.

Research Rothermel has published over 230 articles, has been cited over 24,000 times, and has a Google Scholar H-index of 75. He holds two U.S. Patents

Rothermel has received recognition for his pioneering contributions in developing and empirically evaluating regression testing techniques. He was among the first researchers to propose and empirically study test case prioritization techniques. He also published a paper highlighting the issues regarding regression test selection techniques, and used these issues as the basis for a framework within which to evaluate the techniques.

Rothermel has also worked on "end-user software engineering". His research is concerned with enabling non-professional programmers to create more dependable systems while developing programs such as spreadsheets, web macros, and web mashups. In 2001, he introduced and explored a methodology to adapt data flow adequacy criteria and coverage monitoring to the task of testing spreadsheets.

Awards and honors 1997-2001: National Science Foundation CAREER Award, National Science Foundation 1999: Engelbrecht Young Faculty Award, Oregon State University College of Engineering 2003: Research Award, Oregon State University College of Engineering 2013: Excellence in Science and Technology Award, University at Albany 2013: ACM Distinguished Member, Association for Computing Machinery 2016: IEEE Fellow, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers 2020: Retrospective Impact Paper Award Keynote, ISSTA