With great pleasure, the Department announces the promotion of Jeff Forbes to Associate Professor of the Practice.

Forbes joined the Duke faculty after completing his PhD at the University of California, Berkeley. A member of the education group in the Department, Forbes uses research areas such as mobile robotics and social network analysis as vehicles for motivating and applying computer science education. An active teacher and mentor, his work reaches beyond the boundaries of the classroom into the community at large.

Through his undergraduate Teaching with Robotics class, Forbes encourages Duke students to teach computing and mathematics to local middle and high school students in the Durham area through robotics. Each spring, the young students join their undergraduate mentors at Duke to compete in RoboCup Junior Competition, an annual hands-on tournament where the students use their new-found skills to compete in dance, soccer, and search and rescue competitions.

In addition to robotics, Forbes recently began teaching a new class in social networks, part of a National Science Foundation-funded effort called HarambeeNet, a program to build an alternative introduction to computing centered on the science of networks. By introducing the basics of computing through social networks, a popular and accessible topic, Forbes and other professors in the Department hope to capture the diverse interests of a broad range of students at Duke.

"I really enjoy being here at Duke," says Forbes. "Our computer science education group is the best around, and that's been the key to any success I've had here."