Ashok Ram Basawapatna

Transcription

1 Ashok Ram Basawapatna 2932 Shadow Creek Drive Apt. 207., Boulder, CO Telephone: ; Objective: Recent Computer Science Ph.D. graduate looking to obtain a position instructing and doing cutting edge interdisciplinary research on and creating accessible tools that facilitate computational thinking. Education Ph.D., Computer Science, 2012 University of Colorado at Boulder (CU), M.S., Computer Science, 2009 University of Colorado at Boulder (CU), M.S., Multimedia Engineering, 2005 University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB), Department of Media Arts and Technology B.S., Electrical Engineering and Applied Math minor, 2003 University of Colorado at Boulder (CU), Department of Electrical Engineering Areas Of Expertise Creating high-level educational end-user programming and simulation tools. Creating computational thinking based tools that lower the barrier of entry into programming increasing accessibility. Researching and developing tools and concepts that enable skill transfer from motivational game design to creating simulations.

2 Publications Repenning, A., Basawapatna, A. and Klymkowsky, M. Making Educational Games That Work in The Classroom. In Proceedings of the IEEE Games Innovation conference (IGIC 2013) (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, September 23-25, 2013). ACM Press. Basawapatna, A., Repenning, A., Koh, K. H., Nickerson, H., The Zones of Proximal Flow: Guiding Students through a Space of Computational Thinking Skills and Challenges, ICER '13: International Computing Education Research Conference, August 12-14, San Diego, California, USA. Basawapatna, A., Repenning, A., Lewis, C. The Simulation Creation Toolkit: An Initial Exploration Into Making Programming Accessible While Preserving Computational Thinking, Proc. SIGCSE 13, ACM Press, CO, USA, 2013 Basawapatna, A., Koh, K.H., Repenning, A., Webb, D.C., and Marshall, K.S., Recognizing Computational Thinking Patterns, Proc. SIGCSE 11, ACM Press, TX, USA, Ioannidou, A., Bennett, V., Repenning, A., Koh, K., Basawapatna, A.,Computational Thinking Patterns. Paper presented at the 2011 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) in the symposium Merging Human Creativity and the Power of Technology: Computational Thinking in the K-12 Classroom, New Orleans, April 8-12, Basawapatna, A., Koh, K.H., Repenning, A. Using scalable game design to teach computer science from middle school to graduate school, Proc. ITICSE 10, ACM Press, Bilkent, Ankara, Turkey, Basawapatna, A., Repenning, A. Cyberspace meets brick and mortar: an investigation into how students engage in peer to peer feedback using both cyberlearning and physical infrastructures, Proc. of ITICSE 10, ACM Press, Bilkent, Ankara, Turkey, Koh, K.H., Basawapatna, A., Bennett, V., Repenning, A. Towards the Automatic Recognition of Computational Thinking for Adaptive Visual Language Learning, Proc. of VL/HCC 10, IEEE Computer, Madrid, Spain, Basawapatna, A., Repenning, A. Visualizing Student Game Design Project Similarities. Proc. of Diagrams 10, Springer Press, Portland, Oregon, 2010.

3 Repenning, A., Basawapatna, A., and Koh, K. H Making university education more like middle school computer club: facilitating the flow of inspiration. In Proc. of the WCCCE 09, ACM Press, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, Basawapatna, A. Repenning, A. Poster. Cyberspace Meets Brick and Mortar: Finding the Sweet Spot between Cyberlearning and Traditional Instruction. Poster Presented at SIGCSE 10. Milwaukee, WI, 2010.

4 Projects/Work Experience Thesis Project University Of Colorado Boulder Worked on and completed Ph.D. thesis entitled Creating Science Simulations Through Computational Thinking Patterns. Developed a system, entitled The Simulation Creation Toolkit, on top of the AgentCubes end-user programming tool, that enables users to quickly create simulations at the phenomenological level. AgentCubes is a program that allows rapid agent-based end-user game and simulation development. AgentCube programs consists of agents, which are the actors in the program; each agent contains a depiction, which dictates how it looks, and behaviors which dictate how the agents act (i.e. move, collide with other agents etc.). Agent behaviors in AgentCubes consist of if/then conditionality rules. AgentCubes has shown to be effective in increasing student motivation in the fields of I.T. and Computer Science; however, the time and the amount of programming experience with AgentCubes environment necessary for users to create simulations is a barrier for integrating simulation and modeling units in the classroom environment. The Simulation Creation Toolkit helps to lower this accessibility barrier by allowing student to create agent-based simulations at a higher level by employing analogical reasoning to create behaviors. Students are presented with a pallette of generic animated agents acting out different interactions such as types of movements or collisions. These interactions are referred to as Computational Thinking Patterns which are patterns that are commonly implemented when creating simulations. Some examples of Computational Thinking Patterns include one agent absorbing another agent, one agent changing another agent, one agent tracking another agent, and one agent creating another agent. Students pick the interaction they would like in their simulation, the agents that they want present in the interaction and specify how the interaction should work. The if/then behavior rules that implement the selected pattern are then added automatically. Preliminary studies show that users with little or no prior programming and AgentCubes experience can use the system to create simulations using this tool. Furthermore, users given little guidance were able to create simulations based on high level descriptions via analogy with Computational Thinking Patterns. In general, the findings show that this is an extremely promising

5 avenue towards facilitating rapid simulation creation while preserving computational thinking through analogical reasoning National Institute of Health Cybermod Project Head of Simulation Development AgentSheets Inc. Worked as a researcher on the National Institute of Health funded CyberMod project. Collaborated with high school AP and General Biology teachers, including 2012 Colorado Teacher of the Year Kristin Donley. Developed a generic systems framework enabling quick construction and modifications of agent-based simulations relating to homeostasis for high school biology classes. Agents take on various system roles (such as effector, stimulus, control center etc.), and by placing these agents in different configurations students can run experiments on this representative biological systems to gain a better understanding of biological interactions they happen to be studying. For example, students might place various configurations of alpha and beta cell agents in a pancreas region of the simulation to investigate the impacts on blood sugar regulation, or remove the beta cells to simulate diabetes. The in-class results of this 2 hour intervention were astounding with students scoring significantly better after completing the exercise with an overall effect size, for both blood sugar and negative feedback system related questions, of Graduate Research Assistant Scalable Game Design Research Group and AgentSheets Inc. Previous work in Scalable Game Design Research includes: Developing effective online tutorials and a tutorial framework through videotaped user testing. The tutorials developed are currently used by middle and high school teachers nationwide. Comparing university classroom student games by representing them as high dimensional vectors and calculating similarity scores to better understand

6 classroom watershed moments wherein in-class projects start becoming unique. Helped develop and investigate Computational Thinking Patterns, which are agent interactions initially encountered in game design, but also, transfer to the creation of simulations. Studied whether users who had implemented these patterns in the context of game design could identify these same patterns in real world contexts. Looked at whether users could abstract out the agents involved in a given interaction while preserving the interaction itself. Helped research how effective game design is at appealing to students as a whole as well as women and underrepresented minorities Analyzed how students in a university level game design class used cyber-learning infrastructures in concert with the physical classroom environment in terms of garnering peer feedback and improving homework submissions.

7 National Science Foundation GK-12 Fellow From spring of 2009 to spring of 2011 was a National Science Foundation GK-12 Fellow for the. The Computer Science GK-12 program aims to bring a greater understanding of Computers and Computational Thinking to K-12 education. As a part of this program, worked with multiple teachers at the high school and middle school level. Developed and instructed students in game and simulation design units from 6th-12th grade. Worked in-depth with 7th grade Life Science classes including epidemiology simulations, enzyme reaction simulations, and predator prey simulations. As part of an optional outreach for the GK-12 program started and instructed an 18 week game/simulation design class at CABPES (the Colorado Association of Black Professional Engineers and Scientists) in Denver. CABPES aims to expose underrepresented minorities into the Science and Technology fields University of Colorado Research Assistant Computer Vision Research Lab From , worked as a Research Assistant under Professor Jane Mulligan at the University of Colorado on a project entitled RECTECH. Helped to create virtual hiking trail environments for use in exercise by people with physical disabilities. Project involved taking panoramic trail recordings, from multiple cameras, complete with GPS location data and elevation data. The GPS and camera data is then integrated together and played back for a user on a treadmill or exercise bike. As the user walks faster or slower the speed of playback changes accordingly. Furthermore, as the user increases elevation the equipment responds by increasing treadmill incline. Specifically, worked on the integration of GPS into the system as well as investigating new video capture and playback mechanisms in an effort to improve the project both aesthetically and functionally. Initial project research shows that such an environment has potential to increase motivation to exercise. As part of Ph.D. preliminary exam, created a system that enabled automatic baseball pitch tracking from television frames employing a Kalman Filter approach to

8 decipher possible baseball pitch candidates.

9 Programmer Analyst 3 Institute For Creative Technologies University of Southern California Worked on two systems: The Stability And Support Operations system (SASO) and the Smart Body Module (SBM). The SASO system is a tactical negotiation simulation funded by the army. The aim of the system is to create a virtual human capable of understanding speech, generating speech, and coordinating non-verbal behaviors such as gestures and visemes to accompany an utterance. This virtual human is able to negotiate with a user in real time. There are two general sides of the SASO project. The brain of the agent (often referred to as the agent ), essentially takes in an utterance and outputs a response after querying and updating its own emotional state and internal negotiation model. The second is the body of the agent (referred to as Smartbody ) that handles all the nonverbal behavior generation and scheduling of physical body movements. Though working with both, my primary focus is on Smartbody module (SBM). Smartbody is based on a simple premise- the reptilian body. This idea derives from how people gesture in real life. The nonverbal behavior characteristics of a human are dictated by many things such as the current state of the person, The words the person happens to be uttering, the context of the conversation etc., but in general, a person does not have to explicitly think about how to formulate most gestures; for the most part, gestures are executed subconciously. Things like head nods, arm movements, and facial expressions help convey the context to an audience. In the same sense, smartbody is sent an utterance to be said by the natural language generator (NLG), and information on the body state. By combining these together smartbody creates, in real time, a variety of nonverbal behaviors timed out with interpolation between gestures to create a dynamic performance of speech and gesturing making the virtual human more lifelike. Thus smartbody is able to take a plain text input and automatically generate head nods, facial gestures, visemes, and body gestures scheduled precisely to the utterance.

10 Virtual Reality Tennis Simulation Department Of Media Arts and Technology University of Santa Barbara California As part of graduate thesis project worked on a networkable multi-user fully functional Virtual Reality tennis game complete with rackets equipped with position and orientation trackers, three dimensional virtual environments, and a level of haptic feedback on the racket. Furthermore, researched techniques to facilitate user presence and immersion in a given environment Webwork Systems Specialist Department of Mathematics University of Santa Barbara California Worked on the math department's webwork project under Professor John Donor. This project involved programming in PERL and scripting in LATEX and garnering professor feedback in order to create online coursework that allowed math professors to interact with students more effectively over the internet. Things like individualized message templates and information on demand help the online learning environment 2004 The Shape Of Discourse Department of Media Arts and Technology University of Santa Barbara California In an interdisciplinary collaboration with artist Ben Ritter and visiting artist/programmer Uli Schmits, I helped create a virtual architecture media arts project dealing with polytopes, specifically the truncated octahedron. Written in the Java-based graphical language Processing, the program spidered the web for relationships between various architects and then placed a truncated octahedron representing that architect in a geometrically accurate position with respect to preceding architects based on an algorithm that we devised. The project was presented at the Plasmatica conference sponsored by UCDarnet and Intel at the University of California Berkeley. Furthermore, the work is included in the article Perspectives on Collaborative Research and Education, Leonardo Magazine, MIT Press, 2006.

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12 Teaching Experience 2013 Co-Instructor for Scalable Game Design This coming semester will be a co-instructor for the computer science Game Design class. Currently creating assignments and curriculum that includes topics such as simulation creation, subsumption architecture, chaotic dynamics, and game theory Instructor for Data Structures University of Colorado Taught the CS2 programming class in C++ over the summer of Created and developed lesson plans, labs, assignments, and assessments. Ran lectures and labs pertaining to various data structures, dynamic memory management, pointers, and recursion among many other topics Teaching Assistant for Intro to Programming Lectured 3 recitations weekly, helped write quizzes and tests, helped students with assignments as well as ran test reviews over the course of the semester. 2009/2010/2011/2012 Instructor for Scalable Game Design Summer Institute For the summers of 2009 and 2010 I instructed and helped develop for the Scalable Game Design Summer Institute. The Summer Institute is part of CU Boulder s Department of Computer Science IDREAMS project. The IDREAMS project is an National Science Foundation funded project that aims to reinvent computer science in public schools by motivating and educating all students including women and underrepresented communities to learn about computer science through game design starting at the middle school level. Specifically, for 2 weeks each summer I helped instruct middle school teachers and college students in teaching game design at the middle school level. This

13 included running workshops and classes on simulation creation, troubleshooting student problems, and strategies for effectively teaching a whole game or simulation design unit at the middle school level. After this institute all the teachers taught at least 1 game design unit if not multiple over the course of their respective school years Teaching Assistant for Software Engineering and Tools Lectured 2 recitations weekly. Helped write quizzes and labs as well as helped students with assignments. Received the Outstanding TA award for my work Instructor for Science Discovery Science Education Outreach Program Instructor at Science Discovery. Science Discovery is a CU outreach program that connects K-12 students with science education. I taught 11 weeklong classes over 9 weeks including Superhero Physics, imovie, Lego Mechanics, Lego Structures, and icamp which allows students to explore computation by creating Lego Robots and programming video games among other things National Science Foundation GK-12 Fellow See Projects/Work Experience section above Instructor National Science Foundation Advanced Training Institute Seminar Department of Psychology University of California Santa Barbara The Advanced Training Institute (ATI) for Virtual Reality is run through the Research Center for Virtual Environment and Behaviour (ReCVEB) under UCSB psychology professors Andrew Beall and James Blascovich. This Summer Institute is funded by the National Science Foundation in an attempt to proliferate virtual reality throughout the field of social psychology. To this end, professors from all around the world apply and

14 come to study for the 2 week long intensive course. Instructed and TA'd for the course helping the professors with creation and programming of their individual virtual environments that could tie into their social psychology research.

15 Awards/Fellowships/Professional Associations -Currently a member of the Association for Computer Machinery 2011: CU Computer Science Outstanding TA award. 2009: Received the National Science Foundation Department of Computer Science GK-12 Fellowship. 2007: Received the CU Boulder College of Engineering Dr. Awter Singh Fellowship : Received the Norlin Scholarship and was part of the inaugural Norlin Scholars class.