We’re delighted to report that Shriram Krishnamurthi has been awarded a Henry Merritt Wriston Fellowship for the next academic year. Brown University gives this award to recognize (quoting from the award letter) “the distinguished contributions that our faculty make to undergraduate education”. Receipt of the award entitles the faculty member to one semester’s relief from teaching duties; it is the award committee’s hope that “by rewarding your commitment to teaching thus far with a Wriston Fellowship, we will be supporting research that will continue to enrich your teaching in the future”.
Shriram’s application for this fellowship cited such successes as his last year’s CS 190, described in his lively conduit! article (http://www.cs.brown.edu/publications/conduit/conduit_v13n1.pdf). Featuring the design and implementation of a routing system for Brown’s SafeRIDE shuttle-bus fleet, the course was designed to stress such real-world skills as dealing with incomplete and ambiguous requirements that change over time, using prototype systems to get a better understanding of the requirements, and dealing with administrative structures whose purpose and thrust are at best orthogonal to the goals of a software project. The application also described his extensive research collaborations with undergraduates, which lead to publication at prestigious research conferences, and his TeachScheme! Outreach program that trains high-school teachers in new ways of thinking about computer science.
Shriram plans to use his Wriston Fellowship to design a new course, provisionally called "Computer Science for Social Scientists", and write his second textbook, "Programming Languages: Application and Interpretation".
