Kiavash Bahreini

Associate Teaching Professor

Kiavash Bahreini is a computer scientist with a background in software engineering, databases, and artificial intelligence. He received his BSc. diploma in software engineering and databases in Tehran, Iran, in 2001. He received the MSc. diploma in computer engineering and knowledge management from the Eastern Mediterranean University, Turkey (North Cyprus), in 2008. He received his Ph.D. in computer science and computer vision from the Open University of the Netherlands in 2015.

Between 2002 and 2005, he was a lecturer and curriculum designer at the Tehran Institute of Technology in Tehran, Iran. In 2004, he joined the University of Applied Science and Technology in Tehran, Iran, where he taught operating systems, data structures and algorithms, and file systems and structures. From 2006 to 2008, he was a research and teaching assistant at the Eastern Mediterranean University in Turkey (North Cyprus). Since 2009, he has been a researcher, developer, and faculty member at the University of Twente, the University of Amsterdam, the Open University of the Netherlands, and the Fontys University of Eindhoven in The Netherlands. Recently, he joined as an assistant professor at the Department of Mathematics and Computer Sciences of the Heriot-Watt University in Dubai. He is the author and translator of several books and papers. In addition, he published more than 40 articles in the English language. His research interests include computer science, software engineering, affective computing, computer vision, and intelligent real-time applications development.

In his career, Dr. Kiavash Bahreini had a chance to be a member of three grant proposals at the European Union level. To emphasize, he was a member of a 9.0-million-euro budget EU project called the RAGE project between 2015 and 2019 at the Open University of The Netherlands. The RAGE project was for Horizon 2020 European Commission. RAGE was the biggest successfully delivered European Union project in computer science with 19 partners all around Europe, including The Netherlands, Germany, the UK, Portugal, Spain, Hungary, Italy, France, Bulgaria, and Romania.

He looks forward to continuing his career at the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences at FIU and meeting with his new colleagues. Dr. Kiavash Bahreini wants to thank all the members of FIU who facilitate his landing in Miami and, more specifically, at FIU. He is thankful to the faculty members, the interview committee, the interim director, the interim associate director, the human resources department, and others. Finally, he is grateful for being a member of FIU and looks forward to providing the best support to the students, colleagues, department, and the university.



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Maria Cristina Charters

Associate Teaching Professor

2000 M.S., Computer Science, Nova Southeastern University
1982 B.S., Computer Science, Florida International University

As an instructor for SCIS,  Ms. Charters enjoys teaching the courses that start students off in their IT or CS major: COP 1000, COP 2250, COP 3804, and COP 3337. She is passionate about spreading Computer Science education to all children, starting in kindergarten, through elementary, middle, and high school. She also believes that all students at FIU should get a chance to learn how Computer Science impacts their lives, and to dabble in a little bit of coding in languages such as Python and tools like MIT App Inventor. That is why she helped develop a new online course, IDC 1000 – Computer Science for Everyone, which is designed for students who are non-CS and non-IT majors. She would like all students at FIU to consider taking IDC 1000.

Prior to teaching at FIU, Ms. Charters had 2 other careers.  Most recently, she was an educator and teacher-trainer within the Miami-Dade County Public School District.   Her first career was as a Computer Programmer/Analyst for FPL, where she developed mainframe and client/server systems. She is an FIU alumni, and feels blessed to be able to work in SCIS as an Instructor, after having graduated from FIU with a degree in Computer Science many years ago.



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Trevor Cickovski

Associate Interim Director & Associate Teaching Professor

2008 Ph.D., Computer Science and Engineering, University of Notre Dame

Dr. Trevor Cickovski received his Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame in 2008. He holds Graduate Faculty status and specializes in teaching hardware and Unix coursework, and is IRB-certified and a member of the Bioinformatics Research Group (BioRG) at FIU. He also is a member of the ACM, IEEE, and the National Learning Assistant Alliance (LAA).

Before coming to FIU Trevor was Discipline Coordinator of Computer Science at Eckerd College, instructing a variety of computer science and cross-disciplinary liberal arts courses. He has received three teaching excellence awards, from the FIU College of Engineering (2019), FIU Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences (2017), and from Notre Dame as a graduate instructor (2006). Trevor was named a Center for the Advancement of Teaching (CAT) fellow in 2019, participating in a University-wide effort to improve teaching evaluation and developing a website for CAT referenced in Panther180. He has received funding from Nvidia to bring GPU computing to the classroom.

Trevor is passionate about health and explores roles played the microbiome in maintaining homeostasis. Microbiomes have enormous influence given their ubiquity and involvement in host metabolic reactions. He has explored connections with ADHD, A1AD, COPD, smoking, and red tides using multi-omics approaches that integrate DNA, RNA and metabolites through large-scale processing, GPUs, and network analyses. He has several peer-reviewed publications including JMM, LNBI, Bioinformatics, BMC, ICCABS, IWBBIO, and ACM TCBB. He has received funding from NIJ (epigenetics), and NSF (machine learning and Covid-19 vaccine discovery). Trevor is lead software developer of PluMA, facilitating natural progress by allowing construction of new ideas as plugins in a choice programming language. These can be uniformly tested alongside other plugins and committed to a centralized plugin pool. The PluMA plugin pool has grown from 70 to 225+ plugins from 2019 to 2020, and continues to grow.



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Debra Davis

Associate Teaching Professor

2004 Ph.D., Cognitive Developmental Psychology, minor: Statistics, University of Texas at Austin
2000 M.S., Computer Science, Florida International University
1996 M.A., Developmental Psychology, minor: Statistics, University of Texas at Austin
1993 B.A. with Academic and Research Honors, Psychology, minor: Computer Science, Florida International University



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Patricia McDermott-Wells

Associate Teaching Professor

2015 Ph.D., Computer Information Systems, Nova Southeastern University
1979 M.S., Management Science/Operations Research, University of Miami
1977 B.A., Mathematics, University of Miami

Over 35 years as a professional software developer and system software specialist, from mainframes to PCs. Now sharing my passion for technology to help launch the next generation of experts.



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Caryl Rahn

Associate Teaching Professor

1986 Masters, Computer Science, University of Pittsburgh
1978 Bachelors, Computer Science, University of New York College at Potsdam

Caryl Rahn received her Bachelors degree in Computer Science from the State University of New York College at Potsdam in 1978, and Masters degree in Computer Science from the University of Pittsburgh in 1989. She spent over 20 years working in industry and taught for about 18 years. She is an author on two United States patents written while working at IBM.



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Michael Robinson

Associate Teaching Professor

2007 M.S., Computer Science, Florida International University
2005 B.S., Computer Science, Florida International University



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Joslyn Smith

Associate Teaching Professor

1994 M.S., Computer Science, University of New Brunswick

Joslyn Smith, an instructor, joined the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences, Florida International University in 1997. Joslyn came to FIU with fourteen years of teaching experience from the University of the West Indies, as a lecturer in computer science, in the undergraduate program. Mr. Smith holds an M.S and a B.S in mathematics both from Central Connecticut State University, CT. He earned an M.S degree in computer science from the University of New Brunswick Canada, and a non-degree Certificate in computer science from Clarke University, Massachusetts. Mr. Smith also holds a professional certificate in teacher education from the Mico University College, Jamaica. At FIU, Mr. Smith’s major focus in programming language is the object oriented paradigm. Over the years he has attended many conferences on computer science education. He has served as reviewer for the SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education and has reviewed several manuscripts for major publishers such as McGraw Hill and Prentice Hall.



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