CS Welcomes New Teaching-Track Faculty

Northwestern Computer Science continues to expand its teaching-track faculty with three new additions

As demand for computer science education continues unabated, Northwestern Engineering’s Department of Computer Science is expanding its teaching-track faculty and diversifying its course offerings for undergraduate computer science students and non-majors. 

Connor Bain, Sruti Bhagavatula, and Zach Wood-Doughty will join Northwestern CS, starting fall quarter.

"We are delighted to welcome the most amazing team of three new teaching-track faculty who will be able to deliver a new set of elective courses for our undergraduate students," said Samir Khuller, Peter and Adrienne Barris Chair of Computer Science. 

Connor Bain will receive a PhD in 2021 from the joint program in Computer Science and Learning Sciences at Northwestern University. His research focuses on how people learn about computing, specifically focusing on developing tools and frameworks for teachers to integrate computing into K-12 STEM classrooms. At the core of his pedagogy is framing computation not as a tool reserved for the few, but as a way of empowering learners to challenge the world around them. He hopes to increase opportunities for non-major students to study computer science as well as get undergraduates thinking deeply about how to introduce people to computing.

Sruti Bhagavatula will receive a PhD from the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in the summer of 2021. She received a MS from CMU and a BS from the University of Illinois at Chicago, both in computer science. Bhagavatula’s research lies broadly in security and privacy and in particular, their intersections with social networks, human factors, machine learning, and the Internet of Things. Her research interests also extend to CS education and pedagogical research, and she is excited about involving students in research. At Northwestern, Bhagavatula looks forward to teaching core CS classes including programming fundamentals and data structures as well as security and privacy classes.

Zach Wood-Doughty will receive a PhD in computer science from Johns Hopkins University in 2021. He received a BS from Carleton College in 2014. Wood-Doughty’s research focuses on using natural language processing methods in causal inference. Specifically, he is interested in what assumptions are necessary to make causal claims from the study of observational data collected from social media texts and clinical notes.

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