Keynote Speaker - Dr Paul Curzon, Queen Mary, University of London

Dr Paul Curzon to inject fun and enthusiasm into 12th ITiCSE

Dr Curzon comments: "Innovative approaches to learning and well thought out interaction design are important aspects of both increasing the accessibility of digital media and widening participation in higher education. However another important element is to ensure that people, young and old, realise that computer science is fun and the best way to do that is just by infectious passion for the subject. This is something that I try hard to get across during my outreach work with schools and will definitely form part of my presentation at ITiCSE 2007."

According to Dr Curzon computer science is both fun and interesting. He says, "Studying computer science is about learning to think in a different way, a 'computational thinking' way. It is not about learning to use technology. Nowadays, we all have to do that. Computer science is about inventing new and innovative applications but that are designed in a way that is accessible for all. It is about solving real-world puzzles that affect people's lives, about being enormously creative and most of all having fun in the process."

Dr Curzon is a Reader in the Department of Computer Science at Queen Mary, University of London. He gained his PhD in 1990 from the University of Cambridge on formal verification where he also worked as a Research Associate. In 1996 he joined the Interaction Design Centre at Middlesex University from where he gained his PGCert(HE). His dissertation concerned the integration of the teaching of key skills with programming. In 2004 he moved to Queen Mary, University of London taking on the role of Director of Communications for the Department of Computer Science. He has over 20 years experience teaching at all levels within Higher Education including staff development activities and 10 years teaching first year programming, data structures and algorithms courses. He launched the webzine and magazine, cs4fn with Peter McOwan in the Summer of 2005 as a way to spread their passion about the subject to school students and so enthuse the next generation of computer scientists.