Our Team 

Faculty Director

Assistant Professor of CS Education Department of Computer Science, Stanford University

Chris has an incredible passion and energy for teaching. He was born and grew up in Nairobi, Kenya before moving to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia where he lived until he came to Stanford for university, liked it a lot and stayed. Chris loves exploring our world (through both science and travelling). His research is in machine learning to understand human learning. He has lectured and run programs for CS Bridge in Istanbul, Prague and Bogotá.

Advisor

Professor (Teaching) of Computer Science, Stanford University

Mehran Sahami is a Professor and Associate Chair for Education in the Computer Science department at Stanford University. He is also the Robert and Ruth Halperin University Fellow in Undergraduate Education. Prior to joining the Stanford faculty, he was a Senior Research Scientist at Google. His research interests include computer science education, artificial intelligence, and web search. He is co-chair of the ACM/IEEE-CS joint task force on Computer Science Curricula 2013, which is responsible for creating curricular guidelines for college programs in Computer Science at an international level.

Lecturer - CS Bridge Turkey

Lecturer in Computer Science, Stanford University

Nick Troccoli is a Lecturer in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University. He received his BS and MS degrees in Computer Science from Stanford in 2016 and 2018, specializing in Systems and Artificial Intelligence, respectively. At Stanford, Nick teaches classes in programming abstractions and systems. He has been involved in CS Bridge as a Section Leader and Lecturer in various offerings of the program including in Istanbul, Prague, and most recently online.

lecturer - cs bridge Izmir

Professor in the Electrical Engineering Department, Izmir Democracy University

Baris Bozkurt is a Professor in the Electrical Engineering department at Izmir Democracy University (Izmir, Turkey). He received his Ph.D. (2005) from Faculte Polytechnique De Mons (Mons, Belgium), M.Sc.(2000) and B. Sc. from Bogazici University (Istanbul, Turkey). Following his Ph.D., he worked as a researcher in Svox AG, Zurich, University of Crete-Heraklion, Universitat Pompeu Fabra-Barcelona and a few universities in Turkey lecturing in signal processing and programming. His research interests include speech and music signal processing and computational musicology. Baris has lectured and helped run programs for CS Bridge in Istanbul. He is now setting up the CS Bridge-Izmir program.

Lecturer - cs bridge turkey

Python Instructor and Senior PhD Candidate in Computer Engineering, Koç University

Buket Yüksel is a Python instructor at Koç University. She has more than 10 years of experience in Python programming language and used it on her research during her Ph.D as well. She has been teaching Python Course for 4 semesters at Koç University in Turkey. Her current research focuses on Object Tracking using Deep Learning. Her research interests include Neural Networks and Reinforcement learning.

Course Coordinator - Cs bridge turkey

Administrative Coordinator at the Vice President’s Office for Research and Development, Koç University

Pelin Beşler is one of the two Coordinators at the Vice President’s Office for Research and Development at Koç University. She received her B.A.(2004) and M.A. (2009) in Philosophy from Istanbul University. She is involved in CS Bridge Program as a Coordinator from Koç University and responsible for the administrative aspects of the Program.

lecturer - cs bridge usa

PhD Candidate in Computer Science, Stanford University

Ali Malik is a PhD student in Computer Science at Stanford University focusing on machine learning, theory, and computational education. He completed his Bachelor's in Mathematics, also at Stanford, where he was heavily involved in introductory Computer Science education. Ali loves to teach and has TA-ed and lectured several different courses at Stanford. He also helped run Code in Place: an attempt to teach an open-access introductory programming class to 10,000 students around the world.

lecturer - CS Bridge USA

Adjunct Professor of Computer Science, Ohlone College

Doug Case is an adjunct professor for Computer Science at Ohlone College, and he was a section leader for the Stanford Code In Place programming course last year. Doug has a master's degree in Computer Science from Stanford and a bachelor's degree in Computer Science from The State University of New York at Plattsburgh. Doug is a Senior Software engineer with over 25 years of experience working at both startups and large companies in Silicon Valley. He has seven software patents granted, one pending.

Co-Founder

Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, Stanford University

Nick has always been passionate about computer science and inspiring the next generation of computer scientists. Nick is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering (NAE), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (UK), the IEEE and the ACM. He received the NEC Computer and Communications Prize (2015), the British Computer Society Lovelace Medal (2005), the IEEE Kobayashi Computer and Communications Award (2009), the ACM Sigcomm Lifetime Achievement Award (2012), the IEEE Rice communications theory award (1999). Nick has an Honorary Doctorate from ETH Zurich.

Co-Founder and LECTURER

Asena McKeown graduated from Stanford University with a M.S. in Electrical Engineering and worked at numerous high-tech companies in Silicon Valley in software development, management, and later, in leadership training of technical talent. She believes strongly in the power of education to change lives and co-founded CS Bridge to empower and encourage high school students to become creators of the software and technologies they use every day and to inspire them to contribute to solutions for local and global challenges using the power of software.