You never forget your first love
This was mine, at least in the world of computing.* It’s the DECsystem10, and I did most of my undergraduate work in computer science on a system much like this one at the University of California, Irvine. Those two washing machine-sized boxes in the foreground on the left? They’re disk drives. The big thing to the right? That’s a printer. No, really, a printer. More than forty years later, my iPhone has more computing power than the big chunk of iron in this picture. But even after all this time, I continue to be amazed at all the new and different ways people put computing to use.
I did all my undergraduate and graduate work at UC Irvine, finishing my doctorate in Information and Computer Science in 1989. I then moved to Atlanta and spent fifteen years in the College of Computing at Georgia Tech followed by eleven more years in the Department of Computer Science at the University of British Columbia in beautiful but rainy Vancouver. Eager to say goodbye to the rain and return to the University of California, I joined the faculty in the Department of Computer Science at the University of California, Davis in 2015. Courses I have taught so far include ECS 10 (Introduction to Programming), ECS 15 (Introduction to Computers), ECS 32A (Introduction to Programming), ECS 32B (Introduction to Data Structures), ECS 50 (Computer Organization and Machine-Dependent Programming), ECS 140A (Programming Languages), ECS 170 (Artificial Intelligence), and ECS 188 (Ethics in an Age of Technology). In the months to come it looks like I will be teaching ECS 32B, ECS 140A, and ECS 188 again.
Many years ago, my research was in artificial intelligence and cognitive science, with a strong emphasis on natural language understanding. If you're interested in that ancient work (or you desperately need a sleep aid), you can find citations in my curriculum vitae (click on CV in the menu bar above). For the past couple of decades, my focus has been on improving the introductory computing experience for students and creating outreach programs to broaden participation in computing. I am especially interested in improving access to computing education for students with disabilities. Most recently, I have been working on the development of workshops combining computer programming education with social skills training for teens and pre-teens on the autism spectrum. That work is described in papers presented at the Western Canadian Conference on Computing Education (click on WCCCE2015 above) and Frontiers in Education (click on FIE2018). If you're an undergraduate who might be interested in working in that domain, send me an email and let's chat.
In my spare time I serve as vice-chair for the Department of Computer Science. Do you have a question or suggestion for the department? Send me email...
email: [email protected]
office: 3051 Kemper Hall
* Outside the world of computing, that first love was Cheryl Lambert from my kindergarten class. But she was six years old, I was only five, and she wasn’t interested in a May-December romance. As the noted philosopher Charlie Brown once said, “Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.”
Photos courtesy of Columbia University's DEC PDP-10 page (http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/pdp10.html).
This was mine, at least in the world of computing.* It’s the DECsystem10, and I did most of my undergraduate work in computer science on a system much like this one at the University of California, Irvine. Those two washing machine-sized boxes in the foreground on the left? They’re disk drives. The big thing to the right? That’s a printer. No, really, a printer. More than forty years later, my iPhone has more computing power than the big chunk of iron in this picture. But even after all this time, I continue to be amazed at all the new and different ways people put computing to use.
I did all my undergraduate and graduate work at UC Irvine, finishing my doctorate in Information and Computer Science in 1989. I then moved to Atlanta and spent fifteen years in the College of Computing at Georgia Tech followed by eleven more years in the Department of Computer Science at the University of British Columbia in beautiful but rainy Vancouver. Eager to say goodbye to the rain and return to the University of California, I joined the faculty in the Department of Computer Science at the University of California, Davis in 2015. Courses I have taught so far include ECS 10 (Introduction to Programming), ECS 15 (Introduction to Computers), ECS 32A (Introduction to Programming), ECS 32B (Introduction to Data Structures), ECS 50 (Computer Organization and Machine-Dependent Programming), ECS 140A (Programming Languages), ECS 170 (Artificial Intelligence), and ECS 188 (Ethics in an Age of Technology). In the months to come it looks like I will be teaching ECS 32B, ECS 140A, and ECS 188 again.
Many years ago, my research was in artificial intelligence and cognitive science, with a strong emphasis on natural language understanding. If you're interested in that ancient work (or you desperately need a sleep aid), you can find citations in my curriculum vitae (click on CV in the menu bar above). For the past couple of decades, my focus has been on improving the introductory computing experience for students and creating outreach programs to broaden participation in computing. I am especially interested in improving access to computing education for students with disabilities. Most recently, I have been working on the development of workshops combining computer programming education with social skills training for teens and pre-teens on the autism spectrum. That work is described in papers presented at the Western Canadian Conference on Computing Education (click on WCCCE2015 above) and Frontiers in Education (click on FIE2018). If you're an undergraduate who might be interested in working in that domain, send me an email and let's chat.
In my spare time I serve as vice-chair for the Department of Computer Science. Do you have a question or suggestion for the department? Send me email...
email: [email protected]
office: 3051 Kemper Hall
* Outside the world of computing, that first love was Cheryl Lambert from my kindergarten class. But she was six years old, I was only five, and she wasn’t interested in a May-December romance. As the noted philosopher Charlie Brown once said, “Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.”
Photos courtesy of Columbia University's DEC PDP-10 page (http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/pdp10.html).
