Dr. Laurie Williams is an Assistant Professor at North Carolina State University. She received her undergraduate degree in Industrial Engineering from Lehigh University. She also received an MBA from Duke University and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Utah. Prior to returning to academia to obtain her Ph.D., she worked in industry, for IBM, for nine years. Dr. Williams has done several empirical studies on Extreme Programming and its development practices, pair programming and test-driven development.