Benjamin Lerner

Associate Teaching Professor

  • Programming languages
  • Computer science education
  • PhD in Computer Science, University of Washington
  • BS in Computer Science and Mathematics, Yale University

Benjamin Lerner is an associate teaching professor at the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University. He earned his doctorate in computer science at the University of Washington, Seattle and his bachelor’s in computer science and mathematics at Yale University. At Northeastern, Lerner teaches Fundamentals of Computer Science, Object-Oriented Design, and Compilers. He received awards for CCIS Teacher of the Year and University Excellence in Teaching in 2017. In the past, Lerner worked for Microsoft and MSR, and has taught at the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth Program.

In his research, Lerner has worked on semantics for web programming (JavaScript, the browser event model) and studied how extensible browser environments behave. In his post-doc work at Brown University, that research shifted from studying the semantics of JavaScript to using it as a compilation target. Since then, Lerner has worked on developing a new programming language, Pyret (www.pyret.org), aimed at teaching introductory programming. Pyret has a primary implementation living in the browser and is based on experiences from both teaching novice students and from studying browser semantics. Lerner continues to work on Pyret alongside his teaching responsibilities.

Lerner especially enjoys working with novice students and introducing them to the concepts and the fun of computer science, as he sees them “get it” for the first time. He has been lucky to have a few inspiring teachers who displayed genuine enthusiasm for their material and shared that passion with their students; this led him to do the same for students of his own. Lerner has taught at the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth program and worked with gifted middle-school kids who had not been academically challenged in school and may never have found close friends among other students who were at their intellectual level.

Lerner grew up in New York City.

  • Evolving a K-12 Curriculum for Integrating Computer Science into Mathematics

    Citation: Kathi Fisler, Emmanuel Schanzer, Steve Weimar, Annie Fetter, K. Ann Renninger, Shriram Krishnamurthi, Joe Gibbs Politz, Benjamin S. Lerner, Jennifer Poole, Christine Koerner. (2021). Evolving a K-12 Curriculum for Integrating Computer Science into Mathematics SIGCSE, 59-65. https://doi.org/10.1145/3408877.3432546

  • Data Science as a Route to AI for Middle- and High-School Students

    Citation: Shriram Krishnamurthi, Emmanuel Schanzer, Joe Gibbs Politz, Benjamin S. Lerner, Kathi Fisler, Sam Dooman. (2020). Data Science as a Route to AI for Middle- and High-School Students CoRR, abs/2005.01794. https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.01794

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