Georgia Tech Professors Amy Bruckman and Matthew Gombolay

Faculty Members Recognized for Teaching Excellence

Ben Snedeker
College of ComputingSchool of Interactive ComputingGVU CenterMachine Learning Center

The students have spoken! Two College of Computing faculty members have been named as among the best instructors at Georgia Tech.

Regents' Professor Amy Bruckman and Matthew Gombolay, the Anne and Alan Taetle Assistant Professor of Interactive Computing, have each earned the Student Recognition of Excellence in Teaching: 2021 CIOS Award.

Each semester, the Center for Learning and Teaching surveys students about their course instructors. the Course Instructor Opinion Survey (CIOS) asks students to provide anonymous feedback on an instructor’s respect and support for students, enthusiasm for teaching, and ability to stimulate interest in the course material.

“I love teaching ethics and technology and I’m honored to receive this recognition. My hope is that the students in Computers, Society, and Professionalism (CS4873) feel prepared for the key choices and hard decisions that emerge in their future careers,” said Bruckman, who is the senior associate chair of the School of Interactive Computing (IC).

The Student Recognition of Excellence in Teaching: 2021 CIOS Award is presented each year to 50 instructors with the highest cumulative survey response rates and scores over the preceding Spring, Summer, and Fall semesters. The award includes $1,000 for each recipient, which is provided by the Class of 1934 and the Jack and Frances Mundy endowment.

Bruckman started at Georgia Tech in 1997 after earning her Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Among her many accomplishments, Bruckman served as interim chair of the School of IC in 2017 and was named as an ACM Fellow in 2018. Bruckman’s research interests are in social computing where she focuses on collaboration, social movements, content moderation, and internet research ethics.

Gombolay, who also earned his Ph.D. at MIT, joined the School of IC in 2018. He has research interests in robotics, artificial intelligence and machine learning, and human-robot interaction, and is the director of the Cognitive Optimization and Relational Robotics laboratory. Gombolay was selected as a DARPA Riser in 2018 and awarded a NASA Early Career Fellowship for increasing science autonomy in space.