Email
mahrens@wpi.edu
Office
FL 144
Education
PhD - Tufts University - School of Engineering

Matthew studied Programming Language Design and CS Education for his PhD work at Tufts University (August 2022).

His focus was on the design and implementation of CS course curricula to support self-efficacy and self regulated learning by providing learning environments and tools to explore the computational thinking needed to make software that resembles the technology learners use on a regular basis.

Matthew primarily studied pre-university, first-time programming experiences where learners made smart appliances (IoT), web videogames, computer music performances, and wearable computing devices among other projects of their own designs.

Matthews projects focus on applying CS via motivating (domain-specific) content areas stemming from his original study as a studio musician and music educator. In these roles, he experienced both wonder, accomplishment, and confidence when being able to modify, extend, and build-upon musical software tools in addition to simply being an "end user". 

While his software engineering experiences are an eclectic collection of web, mobile, virtual reality, and other non-desktop hardware applications, all his work focuses making tools through visual and textual Programming Language (PL) front-end design, metaprogramming and compiler design, and runtime systems implementations that operate on small, accessible/commodity computers like Raspberry Pis and Arduinos.