Dr Brett Becker (1976 - 2024)
We are very sorry to announce that our esteemed colleague Brett Becker has passed away. Brett was an Assistant Professor in the School of Computer Science at UCD.
Brett graduated in 2003 from Drew University in New Jersey, USA with a Bachelor’s degrees in Computer Science and Physics (cum laude). He came to UCD to undertake an MSc in Computational Science, graduating in 2004 with First Class Honours. He stayed on to complete his PhD on “High-Level Data Partitioning for Parallel Computing on Heterogeneous Hierarchical Computational Platforms”, supervised by Prof Alexey Lastovetsky.
During his PhD research, he began lecturing in Computer Science at Griffith College Dublin, before joining CCT College Dublin, where he quickly rose to Head of Academics, responsible for the academic direction and educational development of the college, and a student body of over 500. His interest in computing education grew and he completed an MA in Higher Education at TU Dublin in 2015. That year he joined UCD, initially lecturing on the BSc in Software Engineering and BE in Internet of Things programmes at the Beijing Dublin International College, a constituent school of UCD and the Beijing University of Technology.
Brett’s passion was computer science education. He strived to make computing education more inclusive, accessible and useful to students of all disciplines. His second-level textbook (opens in a new window)Computer Science for Leaving Certificate will touch the lives of young computer scientists of the future. His outreach work with disadvantaged schools and the (opens in a new window)CS/SPARKS initiative opened up computer science as a career option with diverse applications and a broad potential for positive social impact.
Brett was active in the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), a global organisation of educators, researchers, and professionals in Computer Science. He was Vice-Chair of (opens in a new window)ACM SIGCSE and Associate Editor, ACM Transactions on Computing Education ((opens in a new window)TOCE) and founded and chaired the Ireland ACM SIGCSE Chapter (opens in a new window)@SIGCSEire.
He collaborated across UCD and other institutions and was author of many papers on Computing Education and how AI and Large language models (LLMs) are revolutionizing the field. His work was recognised by his peers with 9 best paper and 2 best presentation awards at venues such as ACM ICER, the ACM Technical Symposium. Brett organised several conferences in the field of computer science education. He was a Research Fellow of the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.
In person, Brett was modest and self-effacing, but he was energetic, hardworking and full of initiative. Brett was dedicated to his students and always ready to help colleagues. We will miss his guidance, support and friendship. Brett had made Ireland his home and recently became an Irish citizen. He will be greatly missed by his many friends and colleagues in UCD and we extend our sincere condolences to his family.
7 October 2024