Advisory Committee

Joyce Malyn-Smith, EdD, is a national expert on STEM careers and workforce development. For more than 20 years, she has worked with industry experts and educators to identify the major tasks, skills, knowledge, and abilities needed by workers in emerging fields and significantly changed occupations. She has also helped to define new career pathways in industries as diverse as manufacturing, social media, and big data. Malyn-Smith’s interest in helping students transition from school to work began in the 1970s, when she taught high school in the Boston Public Schools. Her research findings have helped colleges develop up-to-date, relevant programs that give students the skills and knowledge needed to succeed once they enter the workforce. For 16 years, Malyn-Smith served as the principal investigator for numerous National Science Foundation-funded grants, including the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) Learning Resource Center (2003–2013); IT Across Careers (ITAC 1, 2 and 3: 2002–2010); Computational Thinking in America’s Workplaces; and the New Media Technician. Malyn-Smith holds an EdD from Boston University and an EdM from Boston State Teacher’s College.

An experienced program manager whose work supports increased access to, and diversity in, STEM fields, Sarita Pillai works to engage youth who are typically underrepresented in STEM fields and to help young people build STEM skills and careers. She has led national, multi-year STEM initiatives funded by the National Science Foundation that provide technical support, dissemination, and outreach to better prepare a diverse, skilled, and innovative STEM workforce. During her career at EDC, Pillai has worked to support middle school educators and students, conducted research on youth engagement with Web-based STEM materials, and examined the role of gender and equity in education. She has collaborated with dozens of education partners, including the National Middle School Association, Ohio State University, the National Science Digital Library, SRI International, Lawrence Hall of Science, and the Exploratorium. Pillai holds a BS in computer science from Northeastern University and an MBA from Bentley University.

Michael A. Evans joined North Carolina State University in August 2014 as a Chancellor’s Faculty Excellence Program cluster hire in the Digital Transformation of Education. He is Associate Professor in the Department of Teacher Education and Learning Sciences specializing in Digital Learning and Teaching. He is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation. His main research area focuses on the role of digital technologies, particularly games, simulations, and social media, to enhance engagement and learning in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Recently, his work has examined how middle school youth from rural communities leverage and appropriate digital technologies to stay motivated when challenged with ill-structured problems in an inquiry-driven setting.

Dr. Shuchi Grover is currently a senior research scientist at SRI International’s Center for Technology in Learning. Her work in computer science education since 2000 has spanned both formal and informal settings. Her current research centers on computational thinking (CT) and computer science (CS) education mainly in formal K-12 settings—studying curricula, tools, and environments that help in developing computational competencies, as well as the social, cultural, and cognitive processes that nurture such development. She is a recipient of several grants from the National Science Foundation to conduct research on CT learning in varied PK-12 contexts including: designing innovative middle school CS curricula aimed at deeper conceptual learning; integrating CT in high school physics classrooms through computational modeling; investigating the integration of CT in preschool learners’ math and science experiences; and using computational learning analytics for examining CT practices in trace data from block-based programming environments. Dr. Grover is a member of the ACM Education Council, an advisor to the national K-12 CS Framework (k12cs.org), an Associate Editor of ACM Transactions on Computing Education journal, a member of the Computer Science Teachers Association’s task forces on Computational Thinking and Assessments, and an advisor to several school districts in northern California on K-12 CS implementation/integration.

Irene A. (Anne) Lee is research scientist at MIT’s Scheller Teacher Education Program / Education Arcade. She is the founder and director of Project GUTS: Growing Up Thinking Scientifically and Teachers with GUTS. The programs she develops enable participants to create computer models then use them to gain a scientific understanding of the world around them. Lee’s research focuses on students’ and teachers’ understanding of complex adaptive systems and their development of computational thinking skills. She is the past Chair of the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) Computational Thinking Task Force and served as a lead writer of the K-12 Computer Science Frameworks and the 2011 CSTA K-12 Computer Science Standards.

Martin founded his research group, the Engaging Computing Group, when he joined UML in 2002. His group develops and studies novel computational environments for learning. The group has developed iSENSE (isenseproject.org), a collaborative, web-based data visualization system. Science, technology, engineering and math teachers use iSENSE to engage their students in inquiry-based learning that is grounded in making sense of data. In 2014, Martin launched CS Pathways (cspathways.org), an NSF-funded collaboration with the school districts of Everett and Medford, MA. Based on MIT App Inventor, the project brings computer science education to middle school students. Students learn computing by making mobile apps for social good -- building community and sharing personal passions. This has engaged students who are traditionally underrepresented in computing -- girls as well as boys, and Latino and African-American students. Martin served on Massachusetts' Digital Literacy and Computer Science Standards Panel, which crafted state-wide voluntary standards for K-12. In July 2017, Martin begin a two-year term as chair of the board of directors of the Computer Science Teachers Association (csteachers.org).