Pausch, Randy

Randy Pausch earned a bachelor's degree in computer science from Brown University and a Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University. He was one of the founders (along with Don Marinelli) of the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) at Carnegie Mellon University and began to teach the course on Building Virtual Worlds here.

He had the title of Young Researcher of the Presidential National Science Foundation ( Eng. National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator ), was a graduate student of the Lilly Foundation ( Eng. Lilly Foundation Teaching Fellow ), then professor of computer science at the University of Virginia at the School of Engineering and Applied Science 1988 to 1997 . He has done research for Walt Disney Imagineering and Electronic Arts , and has advised Google on user interface development.

He received two awards from the Computing Technology Association in 2007 for his outstanding contribution to the computer science education process - the Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award and the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education Award. In the same 2007, he became a member of the association.

He is the author and co-author of five books and over 70 articles, as well as the founder of the Alice software project.

In 2006, Randy was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer . For almost a year, he underwent surgical treatment and experimental chemotherapy, but in August 2007, doctors said that the tumor metastasized to the liver and spleen. After this, Randy was prescribed a course of palliative chemotherapy to extend her life as long as possible: according to estimates made at that time, from three to six months.

In 2007, he returned to Virginia with his family (wife Jay and children Dylan, Logan and Chloe), setting himself the task of leaving the children as many memories of himself as possible and deciding to live not as seriously ill, but with full dedication for the family and himself.

On September 18, 2007, Randy presented the “Last Public Lecture” on the theme “Actually Achieving Your Childhood Dreams” at Carnegie Mellon University ^[4] . This presentation is part of a series of lectures where famous scientists are asked to think and make a hypothetical “final speech” in order to speak “to the whole world if you knew that this was your last chance?”

Other lectures and speeches

• On November 27, 2007, Randy introduced an updated version of his Time Management lecture at the University of Virginia, speaking to an audience of 850 people.
• In March 2008, Randy made a statement to Congress about the need to increase funding and support research on cancer ( malignant tumors ).

The scientist’s personal courage was manifested in a series of frank public speeches in order to increase funding for cancer research and to draw public attention to the fate of seriously ill patients. On March 13, 2008, Randy took the initiative to increase federal funding to fight pancreatic cancer before the US Senate, before the subcommittees on labor, health and social services, education and related institutions.

On May 2, 2008, a PET scan showed that the cancer had spread to the lungs, some lymph nodes in the chest, and metastases in the peritoneum and retroperitoneal space were also detected.

On July 25, 2008, Randy Pausch died of pancreatic cancer in a family home in Chesapeake, Virginia, where he moved so his wife and children could live with relatives after his death ^[5] .

• R. Pausch. Last lecture. - M .: Eksmo, 2008 .-- ISBN 978-5-699-30274-1 .
• Learning to Program with Alice, Brief Edition (with Wanda P Dann and Stephen Cooper), 2006 .-- ISBN 0-13-239775-7 .

• Randy's homepage at Carnegie Mellon University website .
• Health update page .
• Randy Pausch's "Last Lecture" .
• The Last Lecture .
• "Last lecture" with Russian subtitles .