Cruz Izu

Biography

Cruz hold a B Sc Hons (Computer Science) and a PhD (Computer Architecture) from the University of the Basque Country, and a Graduate Certificate on Online learning for UoA. Cruz has a long-term research collaboration with the ATC group at the University of Cantabria, working on the area of Interconnection networks; she has also collaborate in 2012-2016 with the GAZ group at the University of Zaragoza. Cruz has a large experience teaching at UoA, from small groups of 15 students to large classes of 300. She believes students learn most by doing, so her classes mix lectures with examples, exercises and quizzes. Her role as a teacher is mainly to observe students efforts, provide support and feedback so they reach their goals and give guidance when required. Since 2011, Cruz has led the outreach program CS4HS which helps middle and high school teachers introduce Computer Science and computational thinking into their school curriculum. She has recently participated in the write up for the new SACE course Digital Techonologies, which will be implemented in 2018 (Stage1) and 2019 (Stage2). Cruz has becomed research active in the area of Computer Science education in the last 4 years, exploring both outreach topics and teaching programming skills to first year university students.

Research Interest

Parallel Architecures and Interconnection Networks: covering Networks on chip, routing, network evaluation, network design. Computer Science Education: probelm solving, teaching novice programmers, and computational thinking in schools.