Donald Roberts

Donald Roberts is associate professor of Computer Science at the University of Evansville, where he teaches and conducts research in software engineering. Roberts earned both his undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, completing his Ph.D. in 1991. His dissertation, Practical Analysis for Refactoring, was a landmark contribution to software engineering: it provided rigorous analysis for the concept of refactoring—the disciplined restructuring of existing code to improve its internal design without changing its external behavior. This work helped establish refactoring as a systematic practice rather than an informal habit, influencing subsequent tools and methodologies including the development of automated refactoring support in modern integrated development environments.