Research Interests

• Encouraging members of underrepresented groups in computer science

Education

• PhD in Computer Science, Dartmouth College
• BS in Computer Science, Simmons College

Biography

Laney Strange is an associate teaching professor at Northeastern University. She’s in her sixth year of full-time teaching. In addition to her position at Northeastern, Strange is a passionate advocate for underrepresented groups in computer science. A typical Saturday morning will find her teaching Women’s Community of Code programming workshops that empower girls, women, and even local Girl Scout troops.

About Laney

What are the specifics of your educational background?

My husband and I both had “non-traditional” college experiences. We went to college after we got married (me in my twenties, Tom in his forties) and while holding down regular jobs. So, if you ever feel like you came to computer science “late,” I am right there with you. And it doesn’t matter — I belong here, and so do you.

My first exposure to computer science came my freshman year of college, when I randomly signed up for the intro class. I ended up majoring in it and going on to grad school because I loved it… but mostly because I had an amazing teacher. Now, my whole goal in life is to try to be that teacher for someone else.

What are your research interests?

Teaching professor; no active research!

What courses/subjects do you teach?

I teach all over the undergraduate curriculum, as well as in the ALIGN program, a master’s degree for students who have a bachelor’s in a field other than computer science.

What are the specifics of your industry experience?

From grad school, I went into industry. I was a senior software engineer for Amazon.com’s search team at their A9 subsidiary in Palo Alto. I worked on all kinds of projects related to search, including the spelling correction engine, query completion, generating synonyms, and many more.

After Amazon, I was product director for an international nonprofit organization called TechSoup Global. The organization was just starting to build their software engineering team when I came on board. We built software for social change instigators all over the world.