Marian Petre
# Marian Petre

Marian Petre (born 1959) is a British computer scientist and Professor of Computing at the Open University and Director of its Centre for Research in Computing (CRC), known for her work on Visual Programming Environments, and co-developed the concept of cognitive dimensions of notations.

## Education

Petre obtained her Ph.D. in computer science from the University College London in 1989.

## Career and research

In 1990 she started her academic career at the Institute for Perception Research (IPO), in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, which was directed by Theo Bemelmans. Back in Britain she joined the Open University and started cooperation with Thomas R.G. Green, with whom she developed the concept of cognitive dimensions of notations. At the Open University she was eventually promoted to Professor of Computing. Petre was awarded a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award in "recognition of her empirical research into software design."

### Selected publications

Her selected publications include:

* Fincher, Sally, and Marian Petre, eds. Computer science education research. CRC Press, 2004.
* Petre, Marian, and Gordon Rugg. The unwritten rules of PhD research. McGraw-Hill International, 2010.
* Green, Thomas R.G., Marian Petre, and R. K. E. Bellamy. "Comprehensibility of visual and textual programs: A test of superlativism against the’match-mismatch’conjecture." ESP 91.743 (1991): 121–146.
* Petre, Marian. "Why looking isn't always seeing: readership skills and graphical programming." Communications of the ACM 38.6 (1995): 33–44. doi:10.1145/203241.203251
* Green, Thomas R. G., and Marian Petre. "Usability analysis of visual programming environments: a ‘cognitive dimensions’ framework." Journal of Visual Languages & Computing 7.2 (1996): 131–174. doi:10.1006/jvlc.1996.0009
* Petre, Marian, and Alan F. Blackwell. "Mental imagery in program design and visual programming." International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 51.1 (1999): 7-30.
* Carswell, L., Thomas, P., Petre, M., Price, B., & Richards, M. (2000). "Distance education via the Internet: The student experience." British Journal of Educational Technology, 31(1), 29-46 doi:10.1111/1467-8535.00133
