Hasler Professor and Chair of Computer Science Education at the
School of Teacher Education at the University of Applied Sciences
and Arts Northwestern Switzerland
Alexander Repenning is the Hassler Professor and Head of the Department of Computer
Science Education at the Institute of Teacher Education at the University of Applied
Sciences and Arts of Northwestern Switzerland and Professor of Computer Science at the
University of Colorado. He is the director of the International Scalable Game Design
Initiative.Repenning is a pioneer in building block programming, also known as drag-anddrop programming. He has worked in R&D at Asea Brown Boveri, Xerox PARC, Apple
Computer, and Hewlett-Packard.Repenning is the founder of AgentSheets and
AgentCubes computational thinking tools for simulations and games. He has conducted
game design workshops in the United States, Mexico, South America, Europe, and Japan.
His work has received many awards, including the Gold Medal from the Mayor of Paris for
“Most Innovative Application of the World Wide Web in Education” and the “Best
Innovator” award from the ACM, and has been featured in WIRED magazine. A recipient
of the Telluride Tech Festival award for contributions to computer science, Repenning is
also an advisor to the National Academy of Sciences, the European Commission, the
National Science Foundation, Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and
Technology, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).