Dr. Rebecca Williams is an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) in the Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Department (CSEE). She received her BS in Bioengineering from the University of Illinois Chicago in 2008 and her PhD in Engineering Science from Dartmouth College in 2013. Before coming to UMBC, she was a research engineer at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland, studying artificial intelligence/machine learning/computer vision, remote sensing and image processing, data science and visualization, and LiDAR data exploitation. She currently teaches courses in Data Visualization at UMBC, Technology Ethics at UMBC, and Medical Imaging at Johns Hopkins Engineering for Professionals Program. Her current research interests include innovative computing education, immersive media, data visualization, computer vision, computer graphics, and remote sensing.

Dr. Williams' teaching strategies are grounded in concepts of experience, which she uses to solidify and motivate student learning. The influence of this theme on her teaching practices can be described broadly by three concepts: 1) Developing Intuition Through Experience, 2) Experiencing Multiple Perspectives 3) Experiencing Problems and Building Resilience, with particular interest in how technology plays a role in technology education, and ways that educators can enrich student learning without generalizing away individuality. Her goal as an educator is to build healthy resilience in students by creating positive experiences; to protect students against the effects of unhealthy resilience formed by artificial adversity and inflexibility in an already hustle-driven “whatever-it-takes” culture. Her broad objective is to reduce the incidence of imposter syndrome, crab-pot mentality, and burn-out, specifically by helping students improve their frustration tolerance, self-awareness, and confidence. To achieve this, her goal is to create challenging content, rather than challenging circumstances. These themes and practices are the result of purposeful accumulation and refinement over the 15+ years of teaching Dr. Williams has enjoyed.

Dr. Williams is a passionate educator and researcher whose commitment to student success has earned her two awards from the prestigious UMBC Hrabowski Innovation Fund. She is also a University of Maryland System Elkins Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Fellow and has held multiple competitive learning-analytics fellowships at UMBC. Her research spans computing education and geoscience applications, with peer-reviewed publications in venues such as ACM SIGCSE and IEEE IGARSS. Earlier in her career she was selected for both an NSF IGERT fellowship and an NSF GK-12 fellowship, recognizing her interdisciplinary scholarship and outreach to K-12 learners. Outside the academy, Dr. Williams recharges by rock climbing, weight-lifting, sewing, and exploring new video games.