Sohie Lee
Professor of the Practice in Computer Science
Interested in the intersection of cognitive science and computer science as well as the development of introductory computer science curriculum.
My research background is in cognitive science. I'm fascinated with how the brain works and how computational models, along with neurophysiological data, can facilitate understanding of how things such as short-term memory work. I'm also interested in how best to teach computer science at the introductory level and how to promote CS, especially among female students.
I teach mainly introductory lab courses. These are the hands-on classes where students actually write code to solve problems. A typical problem might be to write Javascript to validate a form in a webpage (CS110), or to write Java code to perform image manipulations such as rotation or crop (CS111), or to write MATLAB code to display an MRI slice of brain data from a particular viewpoint (CS112), or to write Java code to create a graphical user interface (GUI) to allow the user to access a database and sort and select data by certain criteria (CS230).
My most recent honors thesis student examined the influence of the programming environment─a graphical drag-and-drop setup versus typing text into an editor window─upon retention of programming knowledge.
College Computer Science Website
Education
- B.S., Cornell University
- M.S., Stanford University
- Ph.D., University of California-San Diego
Current and upcoming courses
Computer Programming and Problem Solving
CS111
An introduction to problem-solving through computer programming. Students learn how to read, modify, design, debug, and test algorithms that solve problems. Programming concepts include control structures, data structures, abstraction, recursion, and modularity. Students explore these concepts in the context of interactive programs, data processing, and graphics or audio, using the Python programming language.
This course has a required co-requisite laboratory - CS 111L.
Note: Students who enroll in CS 111-01 or CS 111-02 may select from the set of these 5 labs: CS 111L-L01 through CS 111L-L05.