Amy Briggs

A.B., Dartmouth College
M.S., Ph.D., Cornell University

Jacob Abbott Professor of Natural Sciences
Professor and Chair, Department of Computer Science
Middlebury College

briggs@middlebury.edu | amyjbriggs@gmail.com

Fall 2024:
CSCI 301 Theory of Computation

Office hours:
Mon 12:30 - 1:45 pm, Tues 2:00 - 3:15 pm, Wed 11:45 am - 1:00 pm
and by appointment

Office:
75 Shannon 213 (map)
Department of Computer Science
Middlebury College
Middlebury, Vermont 05753
(802) 443-2255

Teaching

I enjoy teaching courses throughout the undergraduate curriculum. Courses I regularly teach include CSCI 145 Introduction to Computing, CSCI 150 Computing for the Sciences, CSCI 200 Mathematical Foundations of Computing, CSCI 201 Data Structures, CSCI 301 Theory of Computation, CSCI 313 Programming Languages, as well as First Year Seminars and Winter Term courses.

Professional activity

I have worked in robotics, computational geometry, and computer vision and have co-directed the MiddROVR lab and research projects. Student collaborators from our lab include Anna Blasiak, Darius Braziunas, Carrick Detweiler, Cristian Dima, David Fouhey, Colby Horn, Yungpeng Li, Nera Nesic, Alexander Vanderberg-Rodes, Jeff Wehrwein, Scott Wehrwein, Porter Westling.

I was co-PI on the National Science Foundation award to the College Board that supported the development of the Advanced Placement Computer Science Principles Course. Information about the course can be found at the College Board AP Computer Science Principles site and the AP Central site for Computer Science Principles.

Personal

I grew up in New Hampshire and graduated from Dartmouth with an A.B. in Computer Science in 1986. In 1986-87 I worked as a software engineer at Hewlett-Packard in the Palo Alto area before returning east in 1987 for graduate school at Cornell University. While there I discovered many new interests and, most happily, met my husband Daniel Scharstein. We moved to Vermont in 1994 and have lived in Weybridge on Snake Mountain ever since. I am the proud mom of Anna (24) and Peter (21).