Research
I am an interdisciplinary Research Associate and PhD Candidate with the aim of improving software developers‘ developer experience in firms by considering especially their cognitive load induced by working tasks and, more specifically, their cognitive load during the interaction with Generative AI (GenAI) tools. In my empirical studies, I take a holistic mixed-method, real-life, developer-centred approach by considering objective, continuous physiological measures together with subjective self-reported experiences and behavioural data from screen recordings and mouse-keyboard tracking. My research is funded by the SAP-HPI research program.
Focus: Developer Experience, Human-GenAI Interaction, Wearables, Neuroscience, Psychology, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence
teaching
Project Supervision
| Winter Term 2024/2025 | Master Project | Coding Rhythms: Physiological Insights Into Software Development |
| Summer Term 2024 | Master Project | Code With the Flow |
Thesis Supervision
Master Theses
| 2025 | Kerim Zunic (ongoing) | Wearable-Based Estimation of Cognitive Load in Software Development Environments |
| 2025 | Annemarie Uhlig | Analysis of Software Developers’ Cognitive Load with Machine Learning |
| 2024 | Fabian Georgi | Comparative Analysis of Research and Consumer Wearables in Everyday Situations |
Internship Supervision
| 2025 | Daniela Gasser (ongoing) |
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| 2024 | Annemarie Uhlig |
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Program COMMITTEE Membership
- The 3rd IDE Workshop at ICSE 2026
publications
Brandebusemeyer, C., Schimmer, T., Arnrich, B. (2026). Developers' Experience with Generative AI - First Insights from an Empirical Mixed-Methods Field Study. In IEEE/ACM 48th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Practice (ICSE-SEIP) (just accepted)
Brandebusemeyer, C., Schimmer, T., Arnrich, B. (2025). Wearables to measure developer experience at work. In IEEE/ACM 47th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Practice (ICSE-SEIP), (pp. 23-33).
Brandebusemeyer, C. (2025). Interactions with Generative AI: Wearables to Measure Developer Experience and Productivity Objectively. In IEEE/ACM 47th International Conference on Software Engineering: Companion Proceedings (ICSE-Companion), (pp. 148-150).
Stolp, F.*, Brandebusemeyer, C.*, Hradilak, F., Kursawe, L., Menger, M., Sauerwald, F., Arnrich, B. (2025). Using CognitIDE to Capture Developers’ Cognitive Load via Physiological Activity During Everyday Software Development Tasks. In 2025 IEEE/ACM Second IDE Workshop (IDE), (pp. 46-51).
Uhlig, A., Brandebusemeyer, C., Stolp, F., Pour, H. H., & Arnrich, B. (2025). Examining Software Developers’ Cognitive Load During Daily Activities with Wearables. In Student Conference Proceedings, 1(1), (pp. 1936-1936).
Brandebusemeyer, C., Ihme, K., & Bosch, E. (2022). Travelers' information need in automated vehicles - a psychophysiological analysis. In 2022 Human-Centered Cognitive Systems (HCCS), (pp. 1-6). IEEE.
Brandebusemeyer, C., Luther, A. R., König, S. U., König, P., & Kärcher, S. M. (2021). Impact of a Vibrotactile Belt on Emotionally Challenging Everyday Situations of the Blind. Sensors, 21(21), 7384.
*indicating shared first authorship
Personal
Work Experience
- Since Oct. 2023: PhD Candidate in Digital Health at the HPI in cooperation with SAP
- 2024 & 2025: Research stays at SAP Newport Beach & SAP Palo Alto, US to conduct empirical field studies
- 2023: Student Worker at best practice consulting (AI & LLMs)
- 2022: Student Worker at Bischof + Klein (IT Reporting)
- 2022: Research internship and master thesis at the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) (Psychophysiological analysis of people travelling in an autonomously driving vehicle)
- 2021: Research internship at Macquarie University, Sydney (Social Robotics)
- 2020: Internship at IBM, Hursely, UK (Created educational resources for schools to teach the principles of artificial intelligence and machine learning)
Education
- 2020 - 2022: Cognitive Science (M.Sc.) at University of Osnabrück
- 2019: Semester Abroad at the University of Sussex, Brighton, UK
- 2017 - 2020: Cognitive Science (B.Sc.) at University of Osnabrück
Open Thesis Topics
Feel free to contact me if you are interested in writing your thesis on a topic that is related to my research.
Current open topics in which you would be working with real-life data:
- Questionnaire evaluation of developer experience (several possible directions)
- Data evaluation with code metrics
- Physiological data evaluation
- Behavioural data evaluation