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Osman Yaşar

SUNY College at Brockport

United States of America - Rochester

I currently work on the essence of computational thinking using a cognitive sciences point of view.

Biography

Osman Yaşar has an interdisciplinary background (engineering physics and computer science) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As a practitioner at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, he developed many parallel computer codes for industrial applications (engine combustion, gas dynamics, granular media, and polymeric fluids) and scientific problems (plasma and radiation hydrodynamics, radiation dose computations, and molecular dynamics). As an educator, he established one of the first undergraduate degree programs in computational science (1998), explored the cognitive aspects of computational pedagogy, and developed a computational pedagogical content knowledge (CPACK) framework for teacher education. As an education researcher, he has trained about 1000 teachers on computational pedagogy, conducted empirical research, and testified in 2003 before the U.S. Congress on the merits of interdisciplinary STEM education. In 2005, he was recognized as one of the top 25 national icons in his native country (Turkey) for his contributions to high performance computing and computational science education. He has helped half a dozen institutions to launch new BS, MS, and PhD programs in computational science and engineering, including one at Istanbul Technical University. His is currently developing mobile apps with memory retrieval strategies to help students retain the information they are exposed to in the classroom. Some of his recent publications address cognitive essence of computational thinking (CT), scientific thinking (ST), and engineering thinking (ET) skills and how they can be fostered in secondary schools using modeling and simulation tools.