Bob Kummerfeld

Affiliate Professor of Computer Science

University of Sydney

I am an Affiliate Professor in the School of Computer Science, University of Sydney. I am a member of the Human Centred Technology (HCT) Group led by Professor Judy Kay. I have interests in pervasive and context aware systems, message delivery systems, customisation/personalisation using user models and related areas.

I am particularly interested in Simple Systems – novel interfaces that are easy to use yet efficient and effective.

“Simplicity is a great virtue but it requires hard work to achieve it and education to appreciate it. And to make matters worse, complexity sells better.” Edsger W. Dijkstra

“Any darn fool can make something more Complex. It takes a genius to make something simple.” Pete Seeger

Interests

Architectures for User Modelling
Pervasive Computing Systems

Affiliations

University of Sydney, School of Computer Science
Human Centred Technology Research

Education

PhD in Computer Science, 1979

University of Sydney
BSc in Computer Science (Hons I) , 1973

University of Sydney

Selected Publications

MOOCs: so many learners, so much potential ...

Judy Kay, Peter Reimann, Elliot Diebold, Bob Kummerfeld

In IEEE IIS, 2013

PDF

Recent Publications

Barua, Debjanee, Kay, Judy, Kummerfeld, Bob, Paris, Cecile. Modelling long term goals. User Modeling and Personalisation, UMAP 2014, 2014.

PDF

Judy Kay, Peter Reimann, Elliot Diebold, Bob Kummerfeld. MOOCs: so many learners, so much potential .... In IEEE IIS, 2013.

PDF

Full Publication List

A full list of my publications can be found here.

My cv can be found at My CV

Recent & Upcoming Talks

Recent Posts

Secondpost

Dec 10, 2018 3 min read

This is my second blog entry, still recounting my history. History – part 2 My story continues in 1980 when I was a tenured lecturer in Computer Science. At that time I had become interested in networks and the emerging internet in particular. Australia had a fragmented academic network at the time with the public X25 network and CSIROnet the only long haul options, with some use of dialup modems.

Firstpost

Feb 22, 2018 4 min read

First post on a new blog is the place to introduce myself. As the home page says I am currently (this was written in October 2017) an Affiliate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Sydney. I officially “retired” in 2013 and was immediately re-appointed on an honorary basis, doing most of what I did before: teaching and research. I have since reduced my teaching to one course per year plus helping out with small sequences of lectures in other courses (eg introducing Python to a first class etc) and the odd lecture in other courses.