| Dr. Neil Heffernan | |
|---|---|
| Residence | Worcester, MA |
| Citizenship | USA |
| Nationality | USA |
| Fields | Computer Science, Learning Sciences |
| Institutions | Worcester Polytechnic Institute |
| Alma mater | Carnegie Mellon University (PhD) |
| Academic advisors | Kenneth Koedinger, John Robert Anderson (psychologist) |
| Doctoral students | Leena Razzaq, Mingyu Feng |
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 ASSISTment software, which helps students learn mathematics even as it assesses their knowledge, and which is used by over 4000 students a year in Massachusetts.[1][2] Technology developed by Heffernan has also been incorporated into Cognitive Tutor software developed by Carnegie Learning. He is widely published in intelligent tutoring systems, and educational data mining, and he 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,[3] and the James Chen award for the Best Paper of the Year in the journal User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction.[4]
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 advisors were Kenneth Koedinger and John Robert Anderson. He 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. Also, alongside Dr. Janice Gobert, the two established the Learning Science and Technology Master's and Ph.D. program at WPI.