Dr Brett Becker
Lecturer/Assistant Professor
email: brett.becker@ucd.ie
personal webpage: www.brettbecker.com
Dublin Office:
Phone: +353 1 716 2933
Room: A1.12
Computer Science Building
Belfield
Dublin 4
Beijing Office:
Room 712, Teaching Building 4
Beijing University of Technology
100 Pingleyuan Lu
Chaoyang District
Beijing

- B.Sc. Software Engineering
- Year 1 Computer Programming 2
- Year 3 Software Engineering Project
- Year 4 Parallel and Cluster Computing
- Year 4 Software Engineering Degree Project
- B.Sc. Internet of Things
- Year 1 Computer Programming 2
- Year 4 Internet of Things Engineering Degree Project
- Graduate Diploma in Computer Science for Teachers
- Year 1 Computer Systems
- Year 2 Managing Team-Based Computer Science Projects
Computer Science Education, High Performance Computing, Parallel and Distributed Computing, Heterogeneous Computing
Full list of publications here. If you can't access the full-text of papers using the links below, you should be able to access them here.
- Prather, J.; Pettit, R.; Becker, B.A.; Denny, P.; Loksa, D.; Peters, A.; Albrecht, Z. and Masci, K. First Things First: Providing Metacognitive Scaffolding for Interpreting Problem Prompts. Proceedings of the 50th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE 2019), Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, February 2019. ACM. to appear Best Paper, CS Education Research Track
- Becker, B.A. and Quille, K. 50 Years of CS1 at SIGCSE: A Review of the Evolution of Introductory Programming Education Research. Proceedings of the 50th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE 2019), Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, February 2019. ACM. to appear
- Becker, B.A. and Fitzpatrick, T. What Do Syllabi Reveal About Our Expectations of Introductory Programming Students? Proceedings of the 50th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE 2019), Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, February 2019. ACM. to appea
- Luxton-Reilly, A.; Simon, Albluwi, I.; Becker, B.A.; Giannakos, M.; Kumar, A.; Ott, L.; Paterson, J.; Scott, M.; Sheard, J. and Szabo, C. Introductory Programming: A Systematic Literature Review. Proceedings Companion of the 23rd Annual ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE ’18 Companion), Larnaca, Cyprus, 2018. ACM.
- Quille, K.;,Faherty, R., Bergin, S. and Becker, B.A. Second Level Computer Science: The Irish Journey Begins. Proceedings of the 18th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research (Koli Calling ’18), Koli, Finland, 2018. ACM. to appear
- Beaumont, O., Becker, B.A., DeFlumere, A., Eyraud-Dubois, L. and Lastovetsky, A. Recent Advances in Matrix Partitioning for Parallel Computing on Heterogeneous Platforms. in IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems. doi.org/10.1109/TPDS.2018.2853151
- Luxton-Reilly, A., Simon, Albluwi, I., Becker, B.A., Giannakos, M., Kumar, A., Ott, L., Paterson, J., Scott, M., Sheard, J. and Szabo, C. A review of introductory programming research 2003–2017. Proceedings of the 23rd Annual ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE 2018), Larnaca, Cyprus, 2018. ACM.
- Sanders, K., Hamouda, S., Becker, B.A., Eckerdal, A., McCartney, R., Sheard, J. and Simon. How Statistics are Used in Computing Education Research. Proceedings of the 23rd Annual ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE 2018), Larnaca, Cyprus, 2018. ACM.
- Mooney C., Becker, B.A., Salmon, L. and Mangina, E. Computer Science Identity and Sense of Belonging: A Case study in Ireland. 1st Workshop on Gender Equality in Software Engineering, 40th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2018), Gothenburg Sweden, May 2018.
- Becker, B.A., Goslin, K. and Glanville, G. "The Effects of Enhanced Compiler Error Messages on a Syntax Error Debugging Test" Proceedings of the 48th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE 2018), Baltimore, Maryland, USA, ACM,February 2018.
- Becker, B.A., Murray, C., Tao, S, Song, C., McCartney, R., and Sanders, K. "Fix the First, Ignore the Rest: Dealing with Multiple Compiler Error Messages" Proceedings of the 48th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE 2018), Baltimore, Maryland, USA, ACM, February, 2018.
- Zingaro, D., Craig, M., Porter, P., Becker, B.A., Cao, Y., Conrad, P., Cukierman, D., Hellas, A., Loksa, D. and Thota, N. "Achievement Goals in CS1: Replication and Extension" Proceedings of the 48th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE 2018), Baltimore, Maryland, USA, ACM, February 2018.
- Becker, B.A. "Artificial Intelligence in Education: What is it, Where is it Now, Where is it Going?" In: Ireland’s Yearbook of Education 2017-2018, pp. 42-46 (Themes), Education Matters, 2017.
- Luxton-Reilly, A., Becker, B.A., Cao, Y., McDermott, R., Mirolo, C., Mühling, A., Petersen, A., Sanders, K., Simon and Whalley, J. "Developing Assessments to Determine Mastery of Programming Fundamentals" Proceedings of the 2017 ITiCSE Working Group Reports (ITiCSE-WGR ’17), ACM, 2017.
- Becker, B.A., Glanville, G., Iwashima, R., McDonnell, C., Goslin, K. and Mooney, C. “Effective Compiler Error Message Enhancement for Novice Programming Students” Computer Science Education pp. 1-28, 2016; [doi].
- Becker, B.A. “A New Metric to Quantify Repeated Compiler Errors for Novice Programmers” Proceedings of the 21st Annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE 2016), Arequipa, Peru, ACM, July 2016.
- Becker, B.A., Mooney, C. “Categorizing Compiler Error Messages with Principal Component Analysis” 12th China-Europe International Symposium on Software Engineering Education, Shenyang, China, May 2016.
- Becker, B.A. “An Effective Approach to Enhancing Compiler Error Messages” Proceedings of the 47th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE 2016), Memphis, Tennessee, USA, pp. 126-131, ACM, March 2016.
- Mooney, C., Becker, B.A., Raoof, R., Henshall, D. “EpimiRBase: a comprehensive database of microRNA-epilepsy associations” Bioinformatics 32(9), pp.1436–1438, 2016; [doi]
- Lillis, D., Becker, B.A., O’Sullivan, T., Scanlon, M. “Current Challenges and Future Research Areas for Digital Forensic Investigation” The 11th ADSFL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law (CDFSL 2016), Daytona Beach, Florida, USA, May 2016.
- Becker, B.A. “An Exploration of the Effects of Enhanced Compiler Error Messages for Computer Programming Novices“, MA Thesis, Dublin Institute of Technology, Dublin, Ireland, November 2015.
- DeFlumere, A., Lastovetsky, A., Becker B.A. “Partitioning for Matrix-Matrix Multiplication with Heterogeneous Processors: The Optimal Solution”, HCW 2012 – The 21st International Heterogeneity in Computing Workshop (in conjunction with IPDPS 2012, The 26th IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium), Shanghai, China. IEEE Computer Society, 21 May 2012.
- Becker, B.A. “High-Level Data Partitioning for Parallel Computing on Heterogeneous Hierarchical Computational Platforms”, PhD Thesis, University College Dublin, School of Computer Science and Informatics, College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences, Dublin, Ireland, April 2011.
- Becker, B.A., Lastovetsky A. “Max-Plus Algebra and Discrete Event Simulation on Parallel Hierarchical Heterogeneous Platforms”, In Euro-Par Parallel Processing, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Volume 6586. Springer, Berlin, pp. 63-70, 2010.
- Becker, B.A., Lastovetsky, A. “Towards Data Partitioning for Parallel Computing on Three Interconnected Clusters”, Proceedings of the 6th International Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Computing (ISPDC 2007), Hagenberg, Austria, IEEE Computer Society, pp. 285-292, 5-8 July 2007.
- Becker, B.A., Lastovetsky, A. “Matrix Multiplication on Two Interconnected Processors”, Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Algorithms, Models and Tools for Parallel Computing on Heterogeneous Networks (HeteroPar 2006), in conjunction with the 8th IEEE International Conference on Cluster Computing (Cluster 2006), Barcelona, Spain, IEEE Computer Society, 25-28 September 2006.