Wikipedia

Tim Bell (computer scientist)

Timothy Clinton Bell CNZM is a New Zealand computer scientist, with interests in computer science education, computer music and text compression.

Tim Bell
CNZM
Bell in 2024
Born
Timothy Clinton Bell
EducationNelson College
Alma materUniversity of Canterbury
AwardsOutstanding Contribution to Computer Science Education (2018)
Scientific career
FieldsComputer science education, computer music and text compression
ThesisA unifying theory and improvements for existing approaches to text compression (1986)
John Penny
Websitewww.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/tim.bell

Education

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Bell was educated at Nelson College from 1975 to 1979, and was dux in his final year.[1][2] He completed his PhD at the University of Canterbury, with a thesis titled A unifying theory and improvements for existing approaches to text compression.[3]

Career and research

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Bell joined the staff and rose to professor and head of department. In parallel with his academic work he has developed Computer Science Unplugged, a system of activities for teaching computer science without computers.[4] The system was actively promoted by Google in 2007.[5]

Awards and honors

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In 2017, it was announced by SIGCSE that Bell would receive the 2018 Outstanding Contribution to Computer Science Education.[6][7] In 2018, he was also elected an ACM Distinguished Member.[8]

In the 2024 New Year Honours, Bell was appointed a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to computer science education.[9]

Selected works

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  • Witten, Ian H., Alistair Moffat, Timothy C. Bell, Managing gigabytes: compressing and indexing documents and images. Morgan Kaufmann, 1999.
  • Bell, Timothy C., John G. Cleary, and Ian H. Witten. Text compression. Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1990.
  • Witten, Ian H., and Timothy C. Bell. "The zero-frequency problem: Estimating the probabilities of novel events in adaptive text compression." IEEE transactions on information theory 37, no. 4 (1991): 1085–1094.
  • Ian H. Witten, Alistair Moffat, and Timothy C. Bell. Managing gigabytes: compressing and indexing documents and images. Morgan Kaufmann, 1999.
  • Bell, Timothy, Ian H. Witten, and John G. Cleary. "Modeling for text compression." ACM Computing Surveys 21, no. 4 (1989): 557–591.

References

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  1. ↑ Nelson College Old Boys' Register, 1856–2006, 6th edition (CD-ROM).
  2. ↑ "King's honours". The Bulletin. Nelson College Old Boys' Association. 2024. p. 196. Retrieved 16 February 2025.
  3. ↑ Bell, Timothy (1986). A unifying theory and improvements for existing approaches to text compression (Doctoral thesis). UC Research Repository, University of Canterbury. doi:10.26021/2003. hdl:10092/8411.
  4. ↑ "Tim Bell | Computer Science Unplugged". Archived from the original on 15 October 2009. Retrieved 25 June 2014.
  5. ↑ "Google for Educators". google.com. Archived from the original on 23 August 2007. Retrieved 13 January 2022.
  6. ↑ "SIGCSE 2018 Award Winners". Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education. Retrieved 10 November 2017.
  7. ↑ "UC academic Tim Bell to receive international award for Computer Science Education". University of Canterbury (News). Retrieved 10 November 2017.
  8. ↑ Jim Ormond (7 November 2018). "2018 ACM Distinguished Members Recognized for Contributions that Have Revolutionized How We Live, Work and Play: Major Achievements in Computer Engineering, Education and Science Have Contributed to Some of Today's Most Exciting Technologies". Association for Computing Machinery. Retrieved 9 January 2026.
  9. ↑ "New Year Honours 2024: the full list". The New Zealand Herald. 30 December 2023. Retrieved 30 December 2023.


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