Associate Professor, Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering

Research focus

Computing Education Research (CER) and Learning Sciences (LS)

Education

Ph.D. Learning Sciences, Northwestern University, 2009
B.A. Independent Studies, University of California San Diego, 2002

R. Benjamin Shapiro joins the Allen School from Apple, where he led the Learning Sciences research team and the AI Education program in the Machine Learning Research and Machine Intelligence groups. Previously, he was faculty at University of Colorado Boulder and Tufts University.

In his research, Ben designs new learning technologies and experiences that enable people, especially youth, to make new computational systems that help them to understand the world around themselves, express themselves creatively, and care for human and non-human others. Typically these designs expand participants’ agency by supporting learning about computational methods/technologies that have historically been perceived as too advanced for novices. He enjoys collaborating with teachers and students to design, deploy, and study these interventions in their classrooms. He is the author of over 75 peer-reviewed publications, winner of an NSF CAREER grant, and has received numerous awards for improving diversity and inclusion.