Apr 26, 2022
By Victoria Grdina
School of Computing professor Leen-Kiat Soh has been awarded a Charles Bessey professorship.
Soh was one of six University of Nebraska–Lincoln faculty to be awarded a professorship from the Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor in 2022.
"These distinguished members of our faculty demonstrate the very best of the university’s missions of teaching, research, and service," said Katherine Ankerson, executive vice chancellor. "We are grateful to them for sharing their vibrant work and expertise with us at Nebraska.”
The Charles Bessey professorship was established in 2001 to recognize faculty members with the rank of professor who have established exceptional records of distinguished scholarship or creative activity.
“I am honored to receive this professorship,” Soh said. “I am also happy that our research contributions and impacts are recognized.
Soh conducts research on multiagent systems, intelligent data analytics, and computer science education with a focus on improving teaching and learning, supporting online collaboration, and facilitating adaptive decision making. He also models smart grids, human learning, and social unrest to explore emergent behaviors through computational simulations. Soh has published more than 200 peer-reviewed technical papers.
While at the university, Soh has secured over $20 million in external funding as principal or co-principal investigator. Soh’s work in CS education has contributed to fundamental research, courseware development, professional training, education, instruction, and outreach in the discipline. Key findings include identifying learner profiles and performance in post-secondary CS courses and establishing computational creativity as an effective intervention to improve student learning in CS courses for majors and non-majors. Additional outcomes include the development of new courses for teachers teaching CS and training of STEM teachers to improve their programming skills, directly impacting more than 100 K-12 teachers across Nebraska.
Soh also credits his colleagues and students for their collaborative efforts and contributions to his work.
“I have worked with colleagues at Nebraska and other universities on numerous topics and projects, and I’ve enjoyed the collaborations to solve problems,” Soh said. “I am also proud of both graduate and undergraduate research students whom I have mentored and worked with all these years, as many of them have contributed to this recognition as well.”
Congratulations to Dr. Soh on this outstanding achievement!