Biography
Benjamin Hescott is a teaching professor in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences and the Senior Associate Dean of Academic Programs and Student Experience at Northeastern University. Prior to that, he was an assistant professor at the Department of Computer Science of Tufts University. Hescott’s research interests include computational complexity, approximation algorithms, and computational biology. Most recently, he helped create a new metric of “closeness” for popular biological models. This work was used in the Dream Challenge for Disease Module Identification and received the “Best Performer” award. Hescott’s passion for teaching enables him to continually search for new tools and analogies to help make computer science and programming accessible to all. He has a knack for creating teaching tools out of everyday household objects to model Turing Machine tapes or linked lists.
Hescott graduated from Boston University with a Ph.D. in Computer Science in 2008. He has been the faculty supervisor for the student ACM chapter and served as the liaison to the New England Undergraduate Computer Science Symposium. He is member of the leadership team for Empowering Leadership Alliance (ELA) whose main purpose is encouraging, preparing, and retaining underrepresented minorities in computer science. He is the recipient of the 2011 IEEE Computer Society Computer Science and Engineering Undergraduate Teaching Award, recognizing his contribution to making computer science accessible to all. During his time at Tufts University, Hescott won the 2011 Lerman-Neubauer Prize for Outstanding Teaching and Advising, the 2012 Henry and Madeline Fischer Award (Engineering Teacher of the year award) and the 2012 Lillian and Joseph Leibner Award for Excellence in Teaching and Advising of Students. He was recognized in 2013 by the Tufts Graduate Student Council for Outstanding Faculty Contribution to Graduate Studies. In 2016, he was awarded the ROUTE award which recognizes undergraduate teaching and mentoring. That same year the Tufts Student Body awarded him “Professor of the Year.”
