Benjamin Hescott is a Senior Lecturer and Research
Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Tufts University's
School of Engineering. His research interests include computational complexity,
Kolmorgorov complexity, approximation algorithms, and computational biology.
Most recently, within the school's computational biology research group, he is
working to discover genetic motifs that represent redundant systems. Professor
Hescott's favorite place to be is in the classroom. He is continually searching
for new tools and analogies to help make computer science and programming
accessible to all. His teaching tools include everything from rolls of paper
towels to model Turing Machine tapes to nesting Tupperware containers for
linked lists. His office is full of such props. He is currently working on new
curricula for the first year sequence of computer science. He graduated from
Boston University with a Ph.D. in computer science in 2008. He is the faculty
supervisor for the student ACM chapter and serves as liaison to the New England
Undergraduate Computer Science Symposium. He is winner of Tuft's 2001
Lerman-Neubauer Prize for excellence in teaching and advising. He is also
the winner of IEEE Computer Society Computer Science and Engineering
Undergraduate Teaching Award.