Jeff Gray, Ph.D.

Outreach Events

NCWIT Aspirations: Northern Alabama Awards Banquet- LATE APRIL, 2025
Alabama Summer Computer Camps - two camps for AP CSP students in Alabama for 2025
Alabama Robotics Competition - April 5, 2025
Code.org K5 Workshops (CS Fundametals Teacher Workshops)
Check out our Blockly Languages:

Spherly (Sphero robots), Pixly (Pixel/image transformation), Tunely (sound transformation), CodePlayGround (Adafruit CircuitPlayground), Dronely (drones)
OLD: MOOC on CS Principles, sponsored by Google CS4HS and NSF

Academic Biography

Dr. Jeff Gray is a University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Alabama (UA) and the Director of the Randall Research Scholars Program. He is a National Science Foundation CAREER award recipient and was named the Professor of the Year (Alabama, 2008) by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. At the University of Alabama, he recieved the Morris L. Mayer Premier Award for service and leadership. Jeff is a Distinguished Member of the ACM and was selected into the inaugural class of the IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Contoributors. He currently serves as the chair of the Alabama IEEE Computer Society. Dr. Gray also serves as co-chair of the Development Commitee for the College Board's AP CS Principles course. Jeff is co-chair of Alabama Governor Kay Ivey's Computer Science Advisory Council. He was a past member of the Education Advisory Council of Code.org.

Dr. Gray received a Ph.D. in Computer Science in May of 2002 from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. While at Vanderbilt, Jeff was a research assistant at the Institute for Software Integrated Systems, where he worked on the DARPA Program Composition for Embedded Systems (PCES) project. He also worked on a tool integration project at ISIS that was funded by Boeing. Jeff's thesis advisor was Dr. Steve Schach, and his dissertation committee members were Dr. Janos Sztipanovits, Dr. Gabor Karsai, Dr. Larry Dowdy, Dr. Mike Fitzpatrick, and Dr. Fritz Barnes

In 1991, he graduated summa cum laude with a BS in Computer Science from West Virginia University in Morgantown, West Virginia. Jeff completed the undergraduate degree in three years and was a WVU Honors Student. As an undergraduate, he made the Dean's list every semester and was named a WVU Arts and Sciences Scholar in 1990 and 1991 (1 of 25 students from over 3,000). In 1993, he received an MS in Computer Science (also from WVU). His MS advisor was Dr. Murali Sitaraman and his thesis committee members were Dr. Frances Van Scoy and Dr. Doug Harms.

Jeff graduated high school in 1988 from the Linsly School (founded in 1814), in Wheeling, West Virginia. He was a member of the last all-male graduating class before the school went coed. His research mentors at Linsly were Dr. Garth Innocenti and Mr. Mike Chokel. At Union Junior High School, Mr. James Asplund and Mr. Emil Nardone gave Jeff his first opportunity to explore the joys of computing.

Other additional information about Jeff is available here.

Current/Previous Funding

Below is a summary of external awards over $5k on which I serve(d) as PI or co-PI (approximately $24M combined across all awards).

Active Awards:

NSF ITEST, $1,144,433 ($3,500,000), 5/24-4/28
NSF CSforAll: $978,930, 10/21-9/25
Department of Ed - EIR, $3,969,916, 10/20-7/25
NSF IUSE, $1,188,256, 6/21-5/25

Previous Awards:

NSF ITEST, $1,180,644, 9/18-8/23
NSF CSforAll: $299,903, 10/17-9/22
NSF STEM+C: $1,199,760, 8/16-7/22
NSF INCLUDES: $299,998, 9/17-8/21
NSF STEM-C: $854,484 12/15-12/18
Google CS4HS (2016): $27,110 6/16-6/17
NSF CE21: $1,011,133 1/13-12/16
Google CS4HS (2015): $21,800 5/16-6/16
College Board/NSF: Pilot III- $6,000; 6/12-5/16
NSF IIS: $331,524; 9/11-8/15
Google CS4HS (2014): $24,000 5/14-6/15
NSF BPC:$499,707; 4/10 - 3/14
Dept. Education GAAN: $656,325; 8/10 - 8/13
Google CS4HS (2013): $12,500 5/13-6/14
NSF CAREER: $400,000; 4/07-4/13
NSF Discovery K-12: $2,809,612; 8/09-7/14
NSF RAPID: $65,013; 8/10-7/13
Google CS4HS (2012): $15,000; 5/12-6/13
NSF SHF: $15,000 5/12-4/13
Air Force/AFRL STTR: $39,974; 4/12-3/13
College Board/NSF: Pilot II - $21,000; 6/11-5/12
Google CS4HS (2011): $15,000; 3/11-2/12
NSF CPA: $239,953; 8/07-8/11
Google Research Award:$48,500 12/09-12/10
NSF ITEST: $1,080,000; 1/08-12/10
NSF SMA: $377,000; 9/05-8/07
IBM Eclipse Grant: $15k; 3/05-2/06
DARPA PCES 2: $1,177,373; 4/03-3/05
DARPA PCES: $51,009; 12/02-5/03

Committees and Editorships

Below is a list of conferences in which I serve as organizer or program committee member in the upcoming year. A more detailed list of these events, as well as an archive of past events, is available here.

I currently serve as Editor-in-Chief of Software and Systems Modeling, a Springer journal.