Science Assistments Project - People

	Science Assistments Project The Science Assistments project is generously funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF-DRL# 0733286,NSF-DGE #0742503) and by the U.S. Dept. of Education (R305A090170).
People Project Description Assistments Main Page	Principal Investigator/Director Janice Gobert is an Associate Professor of Learning Sciences and Psychology in the Department of Social Sciences and Policy Studies and the Department of Computer Science. Her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto (1994) is in Cognitive Science, and her Masters is from the Dept. of Educational Psychology, McGill University. Her specialty is in technology-based learning. Before WPI, Janice was Senior Research Scientist at the Concord Consortium (http://www.concord.org), an educational research and development organization in Concord, MA. Janice's earlier work at CC can be seen at http://mtv.concord.org and http://mac.concord.org. Until December 2007, Janice served as North American Editor for the International Journal of Science Education. Janice has been awarded several research and development grants for her work, more information can be found at: http://www.wpi.edu/academics/Depts/SSPS/People/jg1.html.

	Faculty Co-Principal Investigators Neil Heffernan graduated from Amherst College after which he taught middle school in inner-city Baltimore, MD. Two years later he wanted something easier to do, so he got a PhD in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University building intelligent tutoring systems. Neil currently works with teams of researchers, graduate students, and teachers to build the ASSISTment System, a web-based intelligent tutor that over 3,000 students as part of their normal math class. Neil has over 50 peer-reviewed publications. He has received over $8 million in funding on over a dozen different grants from National Science Foundation, U.S. Department or Education, the US Army, the Spencer Foundation, the Massachusetts Technology Transfer Center and the Officer of Naval Research. Ryan Shaun Joazeiro de Baker is an Assistant Professor of Psychology and Learning Science at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He received his Ph.D. in Human-Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon University in 2005. He was a Research Fellow in the Learning Sciences Research Institute at the University of Nottingham, and then was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center, at Carnegie Mellon. While at CMU, he was also the Technical Director of the Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center DataShop, the world's largest public repository for data on the interaction between students and educational software. He is the Associate Editor of the Journal of Educational Data Mining, and was the Program Chair of the First International Conference on Educational Data Mining, more information can be found at: http://users.wpi.edu/~rsbaker/ Joseph Beck is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and a member of the Learning Sciences faculty at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He was previously a postdoctoral fellow in the LISTEN project at Carnegie Mellon University and a Research Professor at WPI. Beck earned his Ph.D. at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He was program cochair of the Workshop on Educational Data Mining at the 2006 National Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Kenneth R. Koedinger is a Professor of Human-Computer Interaction and Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University. He has a MS in Computer Science (University of Wisconsin, 1986) and a PhD in Psychology (CMU, 1990). He has authored over 200 papers and has won over 30 major grants. He directs the Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center (see LearnLab.org) and is a co-founder of Carnegie Learning, a company marketing advanced educational technology. Carolina Ruiz received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Maryland, College Park. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at WPI. Her research interests are in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Data Mining. In her work, Prof. Ruiz has investigated Data Mining and Machine Learning techniques for a variety of educational and scientific domains, including Clinical Medicine, Genetic Analysis, and Intelligent Tutoring Systems. She has served both as organizer and program committee member of several international conferences and workshops, as well as referee for multiple journals.
	Software Engineers Andy Montalvo is a Software Engineer with over 25 years of experience. He is finishing up his M.S. in Computer Science at Fitchburg State College and plans to be a part-time PhD student at WPI. Andy also holds a B.A. in Liberal Arts with a concentration in Mathematics. He has many interests running from blacksmithing to logic, and has participated in the NIH computational linguistics seminars. His interest in computer science are mainly in 3 fields: computability and complexity, computational linguistics, and machine learning. Outside of work, Andy keeps organic egg-laying chickens and stays busy working on his home projects and with his work in the Ashburnham Conservation Trust. In his spare time, he enjoys learning about natural languages, linguistics, and constructed languages. Ermal Toto is a Software Engineer, and part-time interdisciplinary Ph.D. student specializing in learning science and technology. He received his M.S. in Computer Science from WPI in 2008. Ermal also holds a B.S. in Computer Science, with a minor in Mathematics from Worcester State College. From 2002-2009 Ermal worked for Worcester Public Schools doing work in Information Technology. He also has experience teaching GED Math. His hobbies include robotics, European languages, and horticulture. More information can be found at: http://users.wpi.edu/~toto/
	Graduate Students Michael Sao Pedro is a 2nd year Ph.D. student in the Computer Science / Learning Sciences interdisciplinary program. He earned his BS and MS in Computer Science from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 2000 and 2001, respectively. From 2001 to 2007 he was employed as a Senior Software Engineer for BAE Systems, Advanced Information Technologies (AIT), formerly ALPHATECH, Inc. where he specialized in the design and development of intelligent automated and human-in-the loop planning and scheduling systems for the military. He returned to pursue his PhD in learning sciences due to return to his love and passion for education. Sao Pedro is an avid competitive classic video gamer and pinball player. He holds several world records on classic arcade and pinball titles as tracked by the Twin Galaxies International Scoreboard. Juelaila Raziuddin is a full-time Ph.D. student in the Interdisciplinary Program of Learning Sciences and Technology. She holds both a Bachelors of Science in Computer Engineering and Masters of Science in Engineering Management from Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York. Her work experience covers the electronic design automation industries to technology education scope, including K- 8th grade. Her hobbies include cooking international cuisines, outdoor activities, traveling, and interior design/decorating. Matt Bachmann is a first year graduate student in the Computer Science department. He earned his BS in Computer Science from Dickinson College in 2009. He hopes to one day become either become a researcher or a programmer who specializes in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning techniques. In his free time Matt enjoys film and playing games with friends. Nathan Krach is an interdisciplinary master's student specializing in learning science. He received his B.S. in psychological science from WPI in 2008. His interests include technology-based solutions to teacher professional development, the integration of science-technology-society issues into scientific inquiry curricula, and communities of knowledge. On campus, he's an enthusiastic member of the partner dancing community. Adam Ryan Nakama comes to the lab with experience in education, game design, and publishing, as well as a strong background in mathematics. He received his B.S. in Humanities from WPI in 2008. His interests include student motivation, social play in education, and tight coupling in game design. In his spare time, he is a freelance writer, game/experience designer, and dance instructor.
	Undergraduate Students (Former and current) Jacqui Richardson Jillian Daniels Carmen Gringrod Patrick Sebuwufu Dave Embree Steve DiTullio Krista Baker Fioleda Prifti Sana Hashmi Catherine Danko Samantha Wentzell Raha Moussavi-Aghdam James Lawrence Jacob Tanenbaum Meng Sun Jared Drake Lucas Lorditch Migdoel Alvarado Sean McCauley