| Diane Sawyer announced this morning on “Good Morning America” that Professor Randy Pausch ended his battle with pancreatic cancer last night. He was 47 years old. Dr. Pausch received his bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Brown University and a Ph.D. in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, where he worked as a professor of Computer Science, HCI, and design.Some of his mos famous accomplishments include his work in the CMU course “Building Virtual Worlds,” which he founded and taught at the university for ten years. The course website can be found here. He also founded and worked heavily in development of the Alice Project. Alice is a 3D application that allows users to create short animations while learning fundamental, otherwise abstract programming concepts such as object-oriented programming, loops, and statements. I learned the basics of programming with this application at Camden County College in 2003. It is a unique and invaluable tool to the CS community and encourages students who do not know anything about programming but are interested to learn without fear. On September 18, 2007, Dr. Pausch delivered his “Last Lecture,” entitled “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,” at CMU. It is shared on Google Video here. Visit Randy Pausch’s CMU website to learn more about him and donate to pancreatic cancer research. |  |
