Nada Basit

About

Education Background:

​​Nada Basit is a full-time Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of Virginia. She received her PhD in Computer Science from George Mason University and earned her MS degree at GMU as well. She received her BS in computer science from University of Mary Washington. In addition, she has a Graduate Certificate in Biometrics from the Volgenau School of Engineering at George Mason University. While a graduate student at George Mason University, she had extensive teaching experience both as a Graduate Teaching assistant to a number of graduate level courses there, and as an Adjunct faculty member teaching a number of undergraduate courses at University of Mary Washington. She was also selected to be a Research Fellow in the summer of 2001 at the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University.
 

Passion For Teaching:

Prof. Basit's passion is teaching and has been teaching at the University of Virginia since 2013. 

-- She has taught both undergraduate and graduate courses in the Computer Science department:

• Undergraduate courses:  CS 4750 (Database Systems);  CS 2910 (CS Education Practicum a.k.a. the "TA Practicum" - a training and "life skills" course for CS teaching assistants);  CS 2100 (Data Structures and Algorithms I)  (formally CS 2110 - Software Development Methods);  CS 1112 (Introduction to programming - CS 1 for students with no prior programming experience);  CS 1111 (Introduction to programming - CS 1 for students with prior programming experience);
• Graduate courses:  CS 6750 (Database System);  CS 6316 (Machine Learning)

-- She has also taught graduate courses in the School of Data Science (SDS): (course mnemonics/course titles may have since changed)

• CS 5100 (Programming for Data Science);  CS 5012 (Foundations of Computer Science);  CS 5010 (Programming and Systems for Data Analysis)

(Selected) Notable Events...

• Co-organized CAPWIC – the Capital Regional Celebration of Women in Computing conference with Prof. Robbie Hott in 2024. Location: we finally brought CAPWIC to UVA!  
  • UVA, SEAS news article about the CAPWIC conference: "A Full-Resolution Display of Talent: UVA Hosts Women-in-Computing Event" (article written by Eric Williamson on April 9, 2024.) 

Research interests include:

• Computer Science Education, Machine Learning, Bioinformatics, Data Mining, Pattern Recognition
• My current research is in Computer Science Education broadly. Particularly focusing on ...
  • improving the student experience (sense of belonging, engagement with topics and material, level of success during assessments, etc.) in the classroom
  • improving the teaching assistant (TA) experience (ability to better help students, ability to do their tasks more efficiently, etc.) in the classroom
  • enhancing the learning experience by engaging students in hands-on activities through the use of content-specific learning/educational tools (example tool)