You are cordially invited to next Wednesday's IIC Colloquium, to be given by Jeannette M. Wing of the National Science Foundation. *********************** Computational Thinking May 5, 2010, 4:00 pm Room G-115, Maxwell Dworkin, 33 Oxford Street, Cambridge Jeannette M. Wing, Assistant Director for Computer & Information Science and Engineering, National Science Foundation and President’s Professor of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University Abstract My vision for the 21st century: Computational thinking will be a fundamental skill used by everyone in the world. To reading, writing, and arithmetic, we should add computational thinking to every child’s analytical ability. Computational thinking involves solving problems, designing systems and understanding human behavior by drawing on the concepts fundamental to computer science. Thinking like a computer scientist means more than being able to program a computer. It requires the ability to abstract and thus to think at multiple levels of abstraction. In this talk I will give many examples of computational thinking, argue that it has already influenced other disciplines, and promote the idea that teaching computational thinking can not only inspire future generations to enter the field of computer science but benefit people in all fields. About the Speaker Jeannette M. Wing has headed the National Science Foundation's Computer & Information Science and Engineering Directorate since 2007. She is also President's Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, where she was named chair of the Computer Science Department in 2004. Wing is an alumna of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she earned bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering and computer science in 1979, and a doctorate in computer science in 1983. She began her career as an assistant professor at the University of Southern California and joined the Carnegie Mellon faculty in 1985. She has worked or consulted for AT&T Bell Laboratories, Xerox Palo Alto Research Laboratories, Digital Equipment Corp., USC/Information Sciences Institute, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Microsoft Corp. Wing is the author or co-author of more than 100 refereed publications and has presented more than 200 talks before academic, corporate and government audiences. She has been or is on the editorial boards of nine scientific journals, including the Journal of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). She is a member of the National Academies of Sciences' Computer Science and Telecommunications Board and Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing Academic Advisory Board. She is an elected member-at-large on the ACM Council. __________ Refreshments served at 3:45 pm _______________________________________________ iic-colloquium mailing list iic-colloquium(a)seas.harvard.edu https://lists.deas.harvard.edu/mailman/listinfo/iic-colloquium