Jennifer S. Kay
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Office Hours Summer 2013 by
appointment (please email me)
Office Location: Robinson 328S
- Coming from off campus? See this annotated
map if you have arranged to park at the "welcome
gate." Here's a copy of the campus
map without my annotations - Robinson hall is in the
Northeast quadrant of the campus map
- Once in Robinson: Find the elevator (there's only
one) and take it to the third floor. With your back to the
elevator, turn right and go straight
through the door ahead of you (it may be closed, but isn't
locked
during business hours). Walk until you hit a wall, and then turn
right. Walk until you hit a door. My door is to the left of the
one you hit.
Class Information
(old class links: Please note: Old web pages are password
protected simply so I can see who is looking at them. If you'd
like a guest password, please email me. introscif12 robotsf12 gradrobotsf12 founds12 indstudys12 introscif11 introrobotsf11 ioopf11 introrobotss11 intros11 founds11
robotsf10 introrobotsf10 introscif10 intros09 introrobotss09 founds09 introscif08 introrobotsf08 csps08 introsci
intros06 robof06
intros06 introf04 robos04
intros04 founds04 introf03
csps03 founds03
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csps02 robos02
foundf01 cspf01
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ROBOTS!
While I'm interested in a bunch of different aspects of computer
science, I find myself returning again and again to the fields of
robotics. As a graduate student at CMU, I got to play with really
big
robots. Nowadays the robots my students and I play with
tend to be a lot smaller, but some of them fly,
others dance,
and some even wear fancy
costumes!
I also think that robots are a great way to get people excited
about computer science - I've exposed hundreds of computer science
educators to robotics through the Robot Rodeo and
Experience It! events at
the SIGCSE 2011 and
SIGCSE 2012
conferences for computer science educators (check out this great
news
report
about
the Rodeo from CBS 11
News in Dallas) as well as through workshops for
K-12 teachers at Rowan sponsored by 
I'm also part of the team developing Calico, a multi-language
multi-context programming framework and learning environment for
computer science education. Calico includes Myro, an interface for
programming robots - it currently supports the Scribbler robot with
the Fluke board, and I've been working with students on MyroNXT - a
way to program LEGO Mindstorms
robots in Calico. Calico offers a free
textbook
for
learning
Python using robots.
I am co-chair of Rowan's FIRST
LEGO League Qualifier that has brought hundreds of 9-14 year
olds to campus to participate in a robotics and research competition
that is designed to get kids excited about STEM.
I'm also the director of the Rowan
University
Laboratory
for
Educational Robotics (RULER Lab).
Check out our web page for
lots of information about educational robotics, as well as many resources
for K-12 and University Educators who wish to use robotics in
the classroom.
C++ Links
Research Information
My areas of interest include computer science education, educational
robotics, intelligent software agents, robotics (especially mobile
robots), vehicle teleoperation, human-computer interaction, user
interfaces, computers and the elderly, cryptography, computer
vision, and artificial intelligence.
Please visit the Rowan
University Laboratory for Educational Robotics (RULER) home
page and the Calico Project
home page.
For my Ph.D., I developed the STRIPE
system, which was part of Carnegie
Mellon's Navlab
Project. STRIPE is a system for teleoperating vehicles
across low bandwidth links, and links with delays.
While working on my Ph.D., I also did some work in cryptography.
You can take a look at a technical report of mine: Cryptanalysis
Techniques:
An
Example
Using
Kerberos
Publications
Refereed Publications
- Jennifer S. Kay and Janet G. Moss,
"Using Robots to Teach Programming to K-12 Teachers,"
Proceedings of FIE 2012,
ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference October 2012,
Locally
cached
copy
- Douglas Blank, Jennifer S. Kay,
James B. Marshall, Keith O’Hara, and Mark Russo, “Calico: A
Multi-Programming-Language, Multi-Context Framework Designed for
Computer Science Education.” In the Proceedings of the 43rd ACM Technical
Symposium on Computer Science Education, SIGCSE 2012,
March 2012. Locally
Cached Copy
- Kevin Freisen, Tim Sanders, and
Jennifer S. Kay, “Public
School
Students
Left
Behind:
Contrasting
The Trends In Public And Private
School Computer Science Advanced Placement Participation.”
Proceedings of FIE
2011, ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, October
2011. Locally Cached
Copy
- Stacey L. Montresor, Jennifer
S. Kay, Michel Tokic, and Jonathan M. Summerton, “Work
In Progress - Programming In A Confined Space – A Case Study
In Porting Modern Robot Software To An Antique Platform.” Proceedings of FIE 2011, IEEE
Frontiers in Education Conference, October 2011. Locally
Cached
Copy
-
- Robots
as
Recruitment
Tools
in
Computer
Science: The New Frontier or Simply Bait
and Switch?"
Jennifer Kay
In Proceedings of the AAAI
Spring Symposium on Educational
Robotics and Beyond: Design and Evaluation, March 2010.
Locally Cached Copy
- Robots
in
the
Classroom
...
And
the Dorm Room
Jennifer Kay
Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges, Vol. 25, No. 3,
January 2010, pp.128-133. Winner, Best Paper Award CCSCE
2009 Locally
Cached Copy
- From
Mad
Libs
to
Tic
Tac
Toe: Using Robots and Game Programming as a
Theme in an Introduction to Programming Course for
Non-Majors
in Proceedings of the 22nd International FLAIRS
Conference, May 2009. Locally
Cached
Copy
- Pushing
Beyond
Traditional
School
and
Course
Boundaries: High School and
University Students Collaborate on an
Interdisciplinary Project
Adrian Rusu, Amalia Rusu, Jennifer Kay, and Hong
Zhang
Proceedings of FIE 2007: The Frontiers in Education
Conference, Milwaukee, October 2007. Locally Cached Copy
- Getting
Down
&
Dirty:
Incorporating
Homogeneous
Transformations and
Robot Kinematics into a Computer Science Robotics
Class."
Jennifer Kay
Proceedings of the AAAI Spring Symposium on Robots and
Robot Venues, March 2007.Locally
Cached Copy
- Two
Lab
Exercises
for
an
Introductory
Robotics Class
Jennifer Kay
AAAI
Spring
Symposium on Accessible Hands-on AI and
Robotics Education, March 2004. Locally Cached Copy
-
Teaching Robotics from a Computer Science
Perspective
Jennifer Kay
Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges, vol. 19,
no. 2, December 2003. Locally Cached Copy
- Open Source
Software and Computer Science Education
Keith O'Hara and Jennifer Kay
Journal of Computing Sciences
in Colleges, vol. 18, no. 3, Februrary,
2003. Locally Cached Copy
- Investigating
Open
Source
Software
and
Educational
Robotics
Keith O'Hara and Jennifer Kay
Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges,
vol. 18, no. 3, Februrary, 2003 Locally Cached Copy
- Building
Confidence
and
Skills:
A
Prep
Course for Computer Programming
Linda Head, Jennifer Kay, John Schmalzel, Glenn Arr,
Christopher Foster, Steven McDermott, Michael Sterner,
Kenneth Whelan, and Jason Wollenberg, ECE Student
Teaching Team,
Proceedings of the 2001 American Society for
Engineering Education Annual Conference &
ExpositionAlbuquerque, NM, June 2001 Locally Cached
Copy
- Using
the
Force:
How
Star
Wars
Can
Help You Teach Recursion
Jennifer Kay
Journal of Computing in Small Colleges, vol. 15, no. 5,
May 2000.Locally Cached
Copy
-
-
Machine
Learning and Human Interface for the CMU Navlab
Charles Thorpe, Charalambos
Athanassiou, Jennifer Kay, Tom Mitchell, and Dean
Pomerleau
Proceedings of the Sixth International Symposium on
Robotics Research, Pittsburgh, PA, October 1993.
-
STRIPE:
Supervised
TeleRobotics
Using
Incremental
Polygonal
Earth
Geometry
Jennifer Kay and Charles Thorpe
Proceedings of the Third International Conference on
Intelligent Autonomous Systems, Pittsburgh, PA, February
1993. Locally cached copy
-
MARVIN
&
TINA:
A
Multiprocessor
3D
Vision
System
Michael Rygol, Stephen Pollard, Chris Brown, and Jennifer
Kay
Proceedings of the Second International Conference on
Applications of Transputers, Southampton, UK, July 1990.
Ph.D. Thesis
- STRIPE: Remote Driving
Using Limited Image Data
Jennifer Kay
Ph.D. Thesis, Carnegie Mellon University, January 1997.
Available as technical report CMU-CS-97-100, Computer
Science Department, Carnegie Mellon University,
Pittsburgh, PA.
Book Chapter
Invited Publications
Technical Links
Useful Links
Fun Stuff
These links are really old. One day, I'll have time to add some
of my more recent favorites.
- The University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory's Coffee
Machine. (Sadly, this webcam was turned off in
2001. But it was very cool in its day and I can't bear to
take away the link.)
-
Some good quotes.
About Me
I did my undergraduate work at the University of Pennsylvania, in
Computer Science
(in the School
of
Engineering
and Applied Science) and in Mathematics
(in the School of Arts and
Sciences). I also worked in the GRASP Lab
at Penn.
While I was an undergraduate I also spent a year as a
visiting student at Somerville
College, Oxford
University, which is in Oxford,
in the United Kingdom.
I've also been a research assistant at the AI Vision Research Unit
in the Psychology
Department at the University
of
Sheffield.
I graduated with my Ph.D. in Computer Science
from Carnegie Mellon in
December of 1996. I was a member of the CMU Vision and Autonomous
Systems Center (VASC), which is a part of the Robotics Institute.
I used to be a member of the AI Laboratory in the Advanced Technology
Laboratories in Camden,
New Jersey .
I was also a part-time
faculty
member in the Computing
Sciences
Department at Villanova
University.
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Contextualized approaches to
introductory computer science: the key to making computer
science relevant or simply bait and switch?