Member spotlight

Abstract

In this feature of the Bulletin, we highlight members of the SIGCSE community. In this issue, Bulletin co-editor Charles Wallace interviewed Dr. Brett Becker, Assistant Professor in the School of Computer Science at University College Dublin (UCD) in Ireland. Brett double-majored in Computer Science and Physics at Drew University in New Jersey. He then moved to Ireland and completed an M.Sc. in Computational Science and a Ph.D. in Computer Science (Heterogeneous Parallel Computing) at UCD. Since then, he has completed three postgraduate qualifications in Teaching & Learning including an MA in Higher Education. His research interests include the psychology and other human factors of learning programming, including how novices interact with programming languages and environments. In 2020, he received a Teaching and Learning Research Fellowship from the Irish National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education - the highest individual national distinction the sector offers to those teaching in higher education. Brett is active in all four SIGCSE conferences including serving as Chair of the CompEd Steering Committee and Co-chairing ITiCSE 2022 in Dublin next summer. He has co-authored several award-winning papers including best computing education research papers (SIGCSE Technical Symposium 2019, 2021) and best reviewed paper (ICER 2020). Brett is chair of the Ireland ACM SIGCSE Chapter and recently co-authored a textbook aligned with the Irish national second-level Computer Science curriculum.