Akos Ledeczi

Vanderbilt’s free online course, Introduction to Programming with MATLAB on Coursera, is ranked No. 15 out of thousands of MOOCs (massive open online course) and remains one of the Top 50 MOOCs of All Time, rated by Class Central, a search engine and review site for MOOCs. Class… Read More

In this tug-of-war game there was no rope and no pulling. Groans, however, were plentiful as pairs of middle and high school campers at Vanderbilt jabbed at computer keys and space bars to push left or right a small robot car with cartoon googly eyes. One person in each pair… Read More

Vanderbilt University’s Office of the Provost has recognized three engineering faculty proposals with Discovery Grants, one of Vanderbilt’s primary means of investing in advancing the discovery of knowledge in its core disciplines and strengthening the university’s scholarly profile. A total of 13 faculty proposals have… Read More

WIPER will be the first use of ballistic shockwave detection in anti-poaching efforts. The sensors will be integrated into GPS-enabled collars, as shown on the large tusker above. (Photo by Save the Elephants) Anti-poaching authorities will soon have a powerful new weapon in their arsenal – high-tech ballistic shockwave sensors… Read More

Professor Akos Ledeczi and Ph.D. student Brian Broll work with their NetsBlox intuitive visual programming platform. (Vanderbilt University) Vanderbilt University Professor of Computer Engineering Akos Ledeczi doesn’t want everyone to become a programmer. But understanding how computers think, interact, and do what we want them to do – those are 21st century skills, he said. In NetsBlox, a visual programming environment, Ledeczi and an interdisciplinary team are developing a teaching tool that introduces the basics and a high-level view of distributed computing. The team has worked with students as young as middle schoolers and has several upcoming camps and workshops with young learners as well as high school students. NetsBlox is built on top of Snap!, an environment created at the University of California at Berkeley. Snap! is based on Scratch, the best-known programming tool for kids from the MIT Media Lab. Young students use Scratch to create basic Pong-like games, animations or virtual stories. Snap!, a visual drag-and-drop programming language, picks up where Scratch leaves off, making it an appropriate introduction to computer science for high school and college students. Public data sets expand possibilities NetsBlox adds message passing, a way computers communicate with each other; access to a set of online data sources in the public domain – maps, weather, movies, trivia, and earthquakes are a few; and introduces distributed programming. The goal is to make writing a distributed computer program much like solving a simple puzzle. With NetsBlox, for example, an average high school student can create a simple multiplayer game, run it on her phone and play against a friend over the internet after just a few weeks of instruction. The popularity of massively multiplayer online role-playing games made this approach a “no-brainer,” Ledeczi said. The jump to distributed programming and the computational thinking behind it is significant. A distributed program is actually multiple programs running on different computers communicating and synchronizing with each other. Think of the difference between going out to dinner alone or organizing a wedding reception, including picking the date and time, confirming the most important guests can make it, sending invitations, organizing transportation, reserving the place, ordering catering and booking a band. Distributed programming can be far more complex than simple two-person games, but a game introduces the concepts and forces students to program information to send somewhere else plus consider delays and response times. With the data sets, students can create movie quiz games and trivia contests to play with each other. Data on earthquakes, air pollution, astronomy, and weather can be the foundation for a school science project. Read More

Register for Introduction to Programming with MATLAB on Coursera. A new free massive open online course, or MOOC, is being offered by Vanderbilt University that will teach computer programming to those with little or no previous experience April 14 to June 15. While the course is an introductory college-level… Read More

Ten years ago Vanderbilt researchers published a paper that has passed the test of time. This year, the Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SenSys)  introduced a new Test of Time Award at its 12th annual  event held in Nov. 3-6 in Memphis, Tenn. SenSys is… Read More

Two Vanderbilt-related ventures – PinPtr and Spot – are among 10 teams selected for the 2014 business accelerator summer program offered by Nashville’s Jumpstart Foundry. More than 200 companies applied for the 10 spots, according to Jumpstart Foundry co-founder Marcus Whitney. The program began May 19 and companies pitch their… Read More

The most popular Vanderbilt research stories of 2013 plumbed mysteries of the brain, examined complex social phenomena, shed light on dark matter, uncovered a surprising link among our three greatest health threats and more. Of the top ten stories, Akos Ledeczi and Kenneth Pence with Vanderbilt’s Institute for Software Integrated… Read More

Vanderbilt computer scientists have developed a smartphone-based system for identifying the location where gunshots are fired. (Courtesy of ISIS) You are walking down the street with a friend. A shot is fired. The two of you duck behind the nearest cover and you pull out your smartphone. A map of… Read More