Owen Astrachan
Encyclopedia
Owen Astrachan is Professor of the Practice of Computer Science at Duke University
where he is also the department's director of undergraduate studies. He earned an AB degree in Mathemetics from Dartmouth College
in 1978 (with distinction, Summa Cum-Laude, and Phi Beta Kappa), an MAT in teaching mathematics from Duke in 1979 and MS and Ph.D degrees in computer science from Duke in 1989 and 1992.
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Astrachan has won a number of National Science Foundation
(NSF) awards. In 2007 he received one of two NSF CISE Distinguished Education Fellow awards recognizing his role "as an accomplished, creative, and innovative leader who serves the nation as a spokesperson and force for change in undergraduate computing education."
This NSF grant and award follows a CAREER award in 1997 to investigate "practical and pedagogical concerns of the computer science and software engineering communities with an integrated approach to the use, learning, and teaching of [design] patterns" an award
in 1996 to develop materials in support of "an application oriented, apprenticeship learning approach to the CS2 course" and other NSF awards
for developing curricular materials to support education, research, and visualization in 1996 and for developing modules and courses for ubiquitous and mobile computing in 2000.
refers to a tenet in developing assignments:
Several assignments developed by Astrachan have appeared in the
Nifty Assignments Archive
including
Duke University
Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James B...
where he is also the department's director of undergraduate studies. He earned an AB degree in Mathemetics from Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...
in 1978 (with distinction, Summa Cum-Laude, and Phi Beta Kappa), an MAT in teaching mathematics from Duke in 1979 and MS and Ph.D degrees in computer science from Duke in 1989 and 1992.
Teaching
He is the author of . At Duke he won the Richard K. Lublin Distinguished Teaching Award in 2002 for "the ability to engender genuine intellectual excitement, ability to engender curiosity, knowledge of field and ability to communicate that knowledge". He also won the Robert Cox teaching award at Duke in 1995 and an Outstanding Instructor award while teaching for a semester at the University of British ColumbiaUniversity of British Columbia
The University of British Columbia is a public research university. UBC’s two main campuses are situated in Vancouver and in Kelowna in the Okanagan Valley...
.
Astrachan has won a number of National Science Foundation
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...
(NSF) awards. In 2007 he received one of two NSF CISE Distinguished Education Fellow awards recognizing his role "as an accomplished, creative, and innovative leader who serves the nation as a spokesperson and force for change in undergraduate computing education."
This NSF grant and award follows a CAREER award in 1997 to investigate "practical and pedagogical concerns of the computer science and software engineering communities with an integrated approach to the use, learning, and teaching of [design] patterns" an award
in 1996 to develop materials in support of "an application oriented, apprenticeship learning approach to the CS2 course" and other NSF awards
for developing curricular materials to support education, research, and visualization in 1996 and for developing modules and courses for ubiquitous and mobile computing in 2000.
Assignments
In creating assignments for programming courses, Astrachan's Lawrefers to a tenet in developing assignments:
Do not give an assignment that computes something that is more easily figured out without a computer, such as the
old Fahrenheit/Celsius conversion problem... Astrachan's Law reminds us to do a little showing off with our computation.
Several assignments developed by Astrachan have appeared in the
Nifty Assignments Archive
including
- Huffman Coding
- Word Ladders
- DNA
Luis von AhnLuis von AhnLuis von Ahn is an entrepreneur and an associate professor in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University. He is known as one of the pioneers of the idea of crowdsourcing. He is the founder of the company reCAPTCHA, which was sold to Google in 2009...
was a student in two undergraduate courses at Duke under Astrachan. When visiting Duke in 2008, von Ahn discussed his PageRank assignment at Carnegie Mellon UniversityCarnegie Mellon UniversityCarnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States....
. The assignment has been picked up at Cal Tech's Ideas Behind the Web course, but also at Duke UniversityDuke UniversityDuke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James B...
in the Rankophiliac assignment for Compsci 182s Technical and Social Foundations of the Internet. Example for this project.
Programming Contests
Owen Astrachan was a member of Duke's ACM's Programming Team that placed fourth in the world
in 1989 and seventh in the world in 1990. He has coached a Duke team to the world finals every year but one since 1994 which is the most appearances in the world finals of any US team. In 2006
Business Week followed the Duke team during the world finals and reported on how badly they did.
For four years, 1990–1993, he and other graduate students ran the first distributed, Internet-based programming contest
which is reported in . In both the 1992 and 1993 contests Sergey BrinSergey BrinSergey Mikhaylovich Brin is a Russian-born American computer scientist and internet entrepreneur who, with Larry Page, co-founded Google, one of the largest internet companies. , his personal wealth is estimated to be $16.7 billion....
participated first as an undergraduate from the University of Maryland then as a graduate student
from Stanford as did
Sanjay Ghemawat (from MIT) in 1992 and 1993, Daniel SleatorDaniel SleatorDaniel Dominic Kaplan Sleator is a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University. He discovered amortized analysis and he invented many data structures with Robert Tarjan, such as splay trees, link/cut trees, and skew heaps. He also pioneered the theory of link grammars and developed...
(from CMU) in 1992, Dawson Engler (from MIT) in 1993
and Martin OderskyMartin OderskyMartin Odersky is a German computer scientist and professor of programming methods at the EPFL. He specialises in code analysis and programming languages.In 1989 Odersky received his Ph.D...
(from Yale) in 1993.
External links
- DNA
- Word Ladders