Additions to the Computer Science faculty

Lecturer Karen Edwards has 26 years of teaching experience, from community colleges to large state universities as well as liberal arts colleges and K-12 professional development programs. She has developed a number of teaching innovations over the years, all with the goal of increasing student engagement. She is strongly committed to increasing diversity in STEM fields via both one-on-one interactions and advocating for systemic change. Edwards studied mathematics at Princeton and Berkeley, receiving her PhD from Berkeley in low-dimensional geometric topology. Most recently, she taught at Harvard before coming to Tufts this summer. In her spare time, she enjoys the intricate rhythms and sounds of international folk singing and folk dancing.

Professor Jeff Foster's primary research interests include programming languages, software engineering, security, system design, and development. He received a doctorate in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley and a Master's of Engineering in Computer Science from Cornell University. Prior to Tufts, Foster was on the faculty at the University of Maryland at College Park. He admits to a serious chocolate-making habit. In this domain, his research includes tempering methods and the ideal distribution of pistachios.

Assistant Professor Mike Hughes works on statistical machine learning, where he develops methods that find useful structure in large, messy datasets and help people make decisions in the face of uncertainty. His research interests include probabilistic models, optimization, and clinical informatics. Following receipt of his doctorate from Brown University, he spent two years as a postdoc at Harvard. Hughes is also a serious backpacker. During a May 2018 trip to Yellowstone National Park, he saw six bears (two in the back country). He is serious about eating well, too, enjoying such delicacies as home-dehydrated lasagna, rehydrated into a stew for consumption on the trail.

Visiting Assistant Professor Matias Korman, originally from Barcelona, joins us from Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan, where he first received his doctorate and then stayed on as an assistant professor. Korman, whose research focuses on computational geometry and efficient algorithms, also harbors a deep interest in board games. He enjoys playing rare games and making prototypes of games in development. He has helped playtest such games as Eminent Domain from TMG, Wiraqocha from Sit Down!, and Dead of Winter from Plaid Hat Games.