Residence Worcester, MA Name Neil Heffernan | Nationality USA Citizenship USA | |
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Institutions Worcester Polytechnic Institute Alma mater Carnegie Mellon University (PhD) Academic advisors Kenneth Koedinger, John Robert Anderson Role Computer science researcher Education Carnegie Mellon University, Amherst College Fields Computer Science, Learning sciences | ||
Academic advisor Kenneth Koedinger | ||
Neil Heffernan Researcher
Neil T. Heffernan (born 1970 in Worcester, Massachusetts) is a professor of computer science at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He is known for his role in the development of the ASSISTments service, which helps students learn mathematics even as it assesses their knowledge, and which is used by over 50,000 students a year in the US. He is widely published in intelligent tutoring systems, and educational data mining. His work gained prominence when a New York Times Magazine story by Annie Murphy Paul featured ASSISTments and Heffernan's research with the tool.
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Early life and education
Heffernan obtained a bachelor's degree in History and Computer Science at Amherst College, and a doctorate in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University. His doctoral advisers were Kenneth Koedinger and John Robert Anderson.
Career
Heffernan then worked as Assistant Professor and then Associate Professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, establishing the strong Learning Sciences research group in the Computer Science Department at WPI and the Learning Sciences and Technology graduate program at WPI.
Awards and memberships
Heffernan and his research group has repeatedly won "Best Paper" awards at scientific conferences in those areas, including the Marr Prize for Best Student Paper at the 1997 meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, and the James Chen award for the Best Paper of the Year in the journal User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction.