Michael Smith named a Harvard College Professor

Michael D. Smith, a professor of computer science in the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), has been named a Harvard College Professor. The five-year Professorships are awarded for excellence in undergraduate teaching. 

Smith is the former Edgerley Family Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and has been the John H. Finley, Jr. Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences since 2008.

Smith has spent decades thinking about education. He began teaching at Harvard in 1992 and is writing a book about teaching.

A prime example of his hands-on approach is “CS 32: Computational Thinking and Problem Solving,” an introductory course that enrolls some 300 students. On the first day, students install the Integrated Development Environment (a software interface with tools for computer programmers) on their laptops so they can work on problems simultaneously with the professor.

In the final weeks, each student presents an independent project. One group scanned images of cell clusters and identified the locations of individual cells. Another built a script that could automatically highlight ice loss images of a glacier over several years. Another turned the popular online game Wordle into a two-player version.

“It’s amazing what the students accomplished with the foundation from class and some knowledge of how to use generative AI, to discover and learn new libraries with which they could build truly impressive programs,” Smith said. He added, “I want them to have a foundation on which they can start to learn for themselves and become self-sufficient.”

He applies a similar philosophy to his upper-level class, “Critical Thinking in Data Science,” in which students grapple with the ethical implications of ever-more-powerful information technologies. The class features two-week “sprints,” exercises in which students build deepfakes and facial recognition programs — and contended with the social consequences of their creations. Smith summed up the dilemma: “Yeah, I can build it, but should I build it?”

Smith received his Ph.D. from Stanford University and holds a master’s degree from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University. He is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery and a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.