2025-May-23 – Workshop Materials
Updated – 2025-January – I’m Brian King, Associate Professor for the Dept. of Computer Science at Bucknell University. I joined the department in Fall 2010, bringing a mix of prior teaching experience and over a decade of industry experience working as a senior software engineer and software engineering manager for an R&D firm that manufactured real-time aerosol measurement equipment. (The firm was eventually purchased by Thermo Fisher Scientific in Boston, which lead me to head back for my PhD, and ultimately into academia.
I teach courses in data science, machine learning (CSCI 349), artificial intelligence (to be offered in Spring 2026), and software engineering (CSCI 205). I also developed a new course, CSCI 379 – Design and Development for Extended Reality (XR), that I taught for the first time in Spring 2024. I developed CSCI 349, 205, my XR course, and the soon-to-be-taught AI and neural networks course entirely from scratch.
I also co-taught an Integrated Perspectives course, UNIV 200—Introduction to Data Science, with Dr. Abby Flynt in Statistics for several years. It was designed to introduce non-majors to Data Science using the R programming language. Abby and I co-developed the course together. Unfortunately, due to teaching load constraints on both of our schedules, neither of us has been available to teach the course since 2023.
I was a core member of a small team of 3 faculty (myself, Dr. Matt Bailey, Data Analytics, Freeman College of Management, Dr. Pete Brooksbank, Math and Statistics, College of Arts and Science) who worked fervently to create the new Dominguez Center for Data Science – a resource for the campus community whose mission is to raise the data literacy and fluency for every member of our campus. Our aim is to become the data science hub for our community. (If you need help with data, see us!) I’m proud of the work we have accomplished, and eternally grateful to Michael Dominguez ’91 for his giving spirit, whose incredible donation made the center possible. With his donation, we were able to secure space and hire Dr. Kelly McConville, our inaugural director for the center who brings a plethora of experience and a passion for statistics and data science for undergraduates. With Kelly on board, I am now serving as a Faculty Fellow on behalf of the College of Engineering since Fall 2024. (Do not hesitate to reach out to Kelly or any of the three faculty fellows if you are interested in the center’s resources, how you can be involved, or if you need help and guidance. That’s why we’re here. We have funds to support students and faculty on data science projects. We are also teaching workshops regularly where we introduce different facets of data science to the campus community. We’re eager to grow! Kelly has been doing a fantastic job!)
My research spans a wide range of applications around a central theme of machine learning for sequence classification and time series forecasting. My scholarly activities, once rooted in bioinformatics, continue to broaden into many areas, yet are all focused on those same foundations. I’ve collaborated and advised on projects involving DNA and protein sequence analysis and assembly, to more recent interests including eye-tracking, predictive NLP models, interpretative neural network methods, and stock modeling/forecasting. I also collaborate with colleagues in Chemical Engineering on advanced data analysis methods (signal processing, curve fitting, etc.) from their aerosol instrumentation, revisiting some of my early interests from industry that drove me into machine learning and data science.Â
My most recent interest has moved into Extended Reality (XR) development, where I work with students who are interested in developing XR (either mixed reality (MR), augmented reality (AR), or virtual reality (VR) that can improve experiences for those who many struggle with any number of facets of reality. We have more than 20 Meta Quest 3 headsets on campus, and I recently was able to obtain an Apple Vision Pro to help with my research and teaching endeavors in these areas. If you have ideas that you think could benefit from XR devices, let’s talk!