Meet the Cluster 1 Faculty

Curt Schurgers 

Curt Schurgers received his Ph.D. from UCLA in integrated circuits and systems, and his MS in EE from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium (KUL). Before coming to UCSD in 2002, he was a postdoctural associate at MIT. He has also held a research position at the Interuniversity Microelectronics Center (IMEC) in Belgium. From 2004 until 2010, he was an Assistant Professor in the UCSD ECE Department, leading the Wireless Information Systems Lab. In 2010, he became a Development Engineer at the UCSD Qualcomm Institute, supervising the Prototyping Lab. Since July 2017, he has been an Associate Teaching Professor in the UCSD Electrical and Computer Engineering Department.

Leo PorterLeo Porter is an Associate Teaching Professor at UC San Diego.  Professor Porter completed his Ph.D. at UC San Diego in 2011.  After working as a professor at a small liberal college for three years, he returned to be a teaching professor at UC San Diego in Fall 2014.  Although Professor Porter teaches a myriad of courses for the CSE department, from introductory programming through graduate special topics courses, he mainly teaches computer architecture and computing education research courses.  He's well known in the field of computing education research for his work evaluating effective pedagogies, designing assessments, using machine learning to identify at-risk students, and training new faculty on best practices in teaching.  Ultimately, he tries to incorporate the lessons learned from his research on education into his classes to improve the outcomes for his students.

Shirley Miranda

Shirley earned her B.S. in Computer Engineering at UCSD and worked as a software development engineer creating front-end and back-end business software for government and private industry. Her continued volunteer work with high school students through the Greater San Diego Science and Engineering Fair (GSDSEF) inspired her to go into teaching. At the University of San Diego, she earned her M.Ed. focusing on technology in education. She has taught Statistics 1-2, AP Statistics, Robotics and AP Computer Science at Morse High School and currently teaches Computer Science at Kearny High. She has been a Teacher Fellow at UCSD COSMOS since 2007. She has served as the Director of the GSDSEF (1999-2016), a member of the COSMOS Advisory Board and on the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair’s Advisory Council. She has been recognized with the 2014 National Council of Women and Information Technology (NCWIT) Educator Award for her contributions to the computer science educational community. Additionally, she is the 2016 San Diego County Teacher of the Year. She currently is working at the San Diego Unified School District’s Office of Innovation and CCTE to create computer science education and experiences for transitional kindergarten through twelfth grade students. In 2018, she was appointed by the California State Superintendent of Instruction to the Computer Science Implementation Plan Panel submitted a plan to roll out K-12 computer science education in California. Shirley spends her free time writing and visiting the San Diego Zoo with her husband and young daughter (who loves to code). She has published four books Falling, Winter Solstice, Wintering, and Springing of her Bits and Pieces series. She is currently writing her fifth book of the series.