Human-Amplifying and Transformational Computing
                                                     Tiffany Barnes
                                                      Associate Professor
                                                Department of Computer Science
                                                North Carolina State University
                                                  tiffany.barnes@gmail.com




                                                                                  Biographical Sketch

                                                                  Tiffany Barnes is an Associate Professor of Computer Sci-
                                                                  ence at NC State University and received her PhD from
                                                                  NC State in 2003. Dr. Barnes received an NSF CAREER
                                                                  Award for her novel work in using data to add intelligence
                                                                  to STEM learning environments. Dr. Barnes is co-PI on the
                                                                  $9 M NSF STARS Alliance grants that engage college
                                                                  students in outreach, research, and service. She has re-
                                                                  ceived ~$2 M in funds as PI from the National Science
                                                                  Foundation, NASA, and industry sources to research ef-
                                                                  fective ways to build serious games for education, exer-
                                                                  cise, and environmental awareness; promote undergradu-
                                                                  ate research; and develop new ways to teach computing.
                        Abstract                                  Dr. Barnes serves on executive boards for ACM SIGCSE,
                                                                  EDM, and AIED. She has been on the organizing commit-
Human-centered computing has at its core the idea that            tees for several conferences including Educational Data
humans are central to many of the things we create and use        Mining and Foundations of Digital Games, and has served
computers to do. On a trip to Haiti, I began to rethink my        as associate editor for the Journal of Educational Data
own perspective on computing – what, exactly, are com-            Mining and was a guest editor for IEEE Computer
puters and computing for? Computing is and should be              Graphics and Applications.
about amplifying people – to be more of what we think of
as “human”. Not only can computing amplify intelligence
– it can amplify compassion, communication, understand-
ing, and creativity – and even transform people and our
society. Programming languages like Alice, Scratch, and
Snap and the creation of serious games highlight the im-
portance of leveraging creativity to inspire the next wave
of transformative innovation in computing. In this talk I’ll
lead in with this idea and give an overview of my work
including: the new CS Principles Advanced Placement
course (and our Beauty and Joy of Computing version of
it), the STARS Alliance for broadening participation, cre-
ating games for education, exercise, and energy, and using
data to personalize learning experiences.