Tim Bell (computer scientist)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Tim Bell
File:Tim Bell CNZM (cropped).jpg
Bell in 2024
Born
Timothy Clinton Bell
EducationNelson College
Alma materUniversity of Canterbury
AwardsOutstanding Contribution to Computer Science Education (2018)
Scientific career
FieldsComputer science education, computer music and text compression
ThesisA unifying theory and improvements for existing approaches to text compression (1986)
Doctoral advisorJohn Penny
Websitewww.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/tim.bell

Timothy Clinton Bell CNZM is a New Zealand computer scientist, with interests in computer science education, computer music and text compression. In 2017, it was announced by SIGCSE that Bell would receive the 2018 award for 'Outstanding Contribution to Computer Science Education'.[1][2]

Education

[edit | edit source]

Bell was educated at Nelson College from 1975 to 1979, and was dux in his final year.[3][4] He completed his PhD at the University of Canterbury, with a thesis titled A unifying theory and improvements for existing approaches to text compression.[5]

Career and research

[edit | edit source]

Bell joined the staff and rose to professor and head of department. In parallel with his academic work he has developed Computer Science Unplugged, a system of activities for teaching computer science without computers.[6] The system was actively promoted by Google in 2007.[7]

In the 2024 New Year Honours, Bell was appointed a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to computer science education.[8]

Selected works

[edit | edit source]
  • Witten, Ian H., Alistair Moffat, Timothy C. Bell, Managing gigabytes: compressing and indexing documents and images. Morgan Kaufmann, 1999.
  • Bell, Timothy C., John G. Cleary, and Ian H. Witten. Text compression. Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1990.
  • Witten, Ian H., and Timothy C. Bell. "The zero-frequency problem: Estimating the probabilities of novel events in adaptive text compression." IEEE transactions on information theory 37, no. 4 (1991): 1085–1094.
  • Ian H. Witten, Alistair Moffat, and Timothy C. Bell. Managing gigabytes: compressing and indexing documents and images. Morgan Kaufmann, 1999.
  • Bell, Timothy, Ian H. Witten, and John G. Cleary. "Modeling for text compression." ACM Computing Surveys 21, no. 4 (1989): 557–591.

References

[edit | edit source]
  1. ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
  2. ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
  3. ^ Nelson College Old Boys' Register, 1856–2006, 6th edition (CD-ROM).
  4. ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
  5. ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
  6. ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
  7. ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
  8. ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).

Lua error in Module:Authority_control at line 153: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).