Behrooz

Literacy and numeracy, introduced long ago to define the skill sets of a competent workforce are no longer adequate. Literacy is instilled and improved by telling stories that use more and more advanced vocabulary and grammar. The key tool in teaching and advancing numeracy is dealing with real-life problems, be they book-keeping and accounting tasks, analyzing geometric shapes and relationships, or deriving answers from (partially) supplied information. Teaching technical literacy (techeracy) requires a further shift away from story-telling and word problems toward logical reasoning, as reflected in the activity of solving puzzles. I have used this puzzle-based approach in teaching science and technology appreciation in an interdisciplinary freshman seminar and for introducing advanced technological concepts to engineering students at UCSB. In this talk, I will draw upon my experiences to convey how a diverse group of learners can be brought to understand the underpinnings of complex science and technology concepts. Once the basics are imparted in this manner, learners become empowered to pursue additional topics through suitably designed self-contained study modules.

Biography:

Behrooz Parhami (PhD in computer science from UCLA, 1973) is Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and former Associate Dean for Academic Personnel, College of Engineering, at UCSB He has research interests in computer arithmetic, parallel processing, and dependable computing. His technical publications include over 300 papers in peer-reviewed journals and international conferences, a Persian-language textbook, and an English/Persian glossary of computing terms. Among his publications are three textbooks on parallel processing (Plenum, 1999), computer arithmetic (Oxford, 2000; 2nd ed. 2010), and computer architecture (Oxford, 2005). Professor Parhami is a Life Fellow of IEEE, a Fellow of IET, a Chartered Fellow of the British Computer Society, a member of the Association for Computing Machinery and American Society for Engineering Education, and a Distinguished Member of the Informatics Society of Iran for which he served as a founding member and President during 1979-84. Professor Parhami has served on the editorial boards of IEEE Trans. Sustainable Computing (since 2016), IEEE Trans. Computers (2009-2014; 2016-now), IEEE Trans. Parallel and Distributed Systems (2006-2010), and International J. Parallel, Emergent and Distributed Systems (2006-2012). He also chaired IEEE's Iran Section (1977-1986), received the IEEE Centennial Medal in 1984, and was honored with a most-cited paper award from J. Parallel & Distributed Computing in 2010. His consulting activities cover the design of high-performance digital systems and associated intellectual property issues.