Félienne Frederieke Johanna Hermans (/Fay-lee-nuh/, born 1984) is a scientist and Professor at

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam The (abbreviated as ''VU Amsterdam'' or simply ''VU'' when in context) is a public university, public research university in Amsterdam, Netherlands, founded in 1880. The VU Amsterdam is one of two large, publicly funded research universities in ...

.Félienne's Her research interests include

programming education Program (American English; also Commonwealth English in terms of computer programming and related activities) or programme (Commonwealth English in all other meanings), programmer, or programming may refer to: Business and management * Program m ...

and

end-user computing End-user computing (EUC) refers to systems in which non-programmers can create working applications. EUC is a group of approaches to computing that aim to better integrate end users into the computing environment. These approaches attempt to rea ...

particularly

spreadsheet A spreadsheet is a computer application for computation, organization, analysis and storage of data in tabular form. Spreadsheets were developed as computerized analogs of paper accounting worksheets. The program operates on data entered in c ...

Education

Hermans received her

Master of Science A Master of Science (; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree. In contrast to the Master of Arts degree, the Master of Science degree is typically granted for studies in sciences, engineering and medici ...

degree in

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

from

Eindhoven University of Technology The Eindhoven University of Technology (), Abbreviation, abbr. TU/e, is a public university, public technical university in the Netherlands, situated in Eindhoven. In 2020–21, around 14,000 students were enrolled in its Bachelor of Science, BS ...

, and her

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

software engineering Software engineering is a branch of both computer science and engineering focused on designing, developing, testing, and maintaining Application software, software applications. It involves applying engineering design process, engineering principl ...

in 2013 from

Delft University of Technology The Delft University of Technology (TU Delft; ) is the oldest and largest Dutch public university, public Institute of technology, technical university, located in Delft, Netherlands. It specializes in engineering, technology, computing, design, a ...

Career and research

After her PhD, she was appointed an

assistant professor Assistant professor is an academic rank just below the rank of an associate professor used in universities or colleges, mainly in the United States, Canada, Japan, and South Korea. Overview This position is generally taken after earning a doct ...

, heading the Spreadsheet Lab. Hermans is head of the Programming Education Research Lab (PERL). Hermans is the founder and former CEO of Infotron, a

research spin-off A research spin-off is a company that falls into at least one of the four following categories: #Companies that have an Equity investment from a national library or university #Companies that license technology from a public research institute or ...

company of TU Delft that implements risk assessment software for spreadsheets. Hermans is active with DigiLeerkracht, the

computational thinking Computational thinking (CT) refers to the thought processes involved in formulating problems so their solutions can be represented as computational steps and algorithms. In education, CT is a set of problem-solving methods that involve expressin ...

teaching by Future.nl, and teaches programming, including one day a week at the Lyceum Kralingen in Rotterdam. In addition, Hermans is a referee at the

FIRST Lego League Challenge The ''FIRST'' Lego League Challenge (formerly known as ''FIRST'' Lego League) is an international competition organized by '' FIRST'' for elementary and middle school students (ages 9–14 in the United States and Canada, 9-15 elsewhere). Each y ...

, where children build a robot from

Lego Lego (, ; ; stylised as LEGO) is a line of plastic construction toys manufactured by the Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. Lego consists of variously coloured interlocking plastic bricks made of acrylonitri ...

. She served as a board member at Devnology Nederland, an organisation for software developers. She is a co-organiser of the yearly conference ''Joy of Coding''.

Outreach

In 2011, Hermans gave a

TEDx TED Conferences, LLC (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an American-Canadian non-profit media organization that posts international talks online for free distribution under the slogan "Ideas Change Everything" (previously "Ideas Worth Sprea ...

talk in Delft. Hermans has given research talks at conferences including StrangeLoop, NDC, GOTO, and DDD Europe, a conference about

domain-driven design Domain-driven design (DDD) is a major software design approach, focusing on modeling software to match a domain according to input from that domain's experts. DDD is against the idea of having a single unified model; instead it divides a large s ...

. Since 2016, she is a host of SE Radio. Hermans produced several

Massive open online course A massive open online course (MOOC ) or an open online course is an online course aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the World Wide Web, Web. In addition to traditional course materials, such as filmed lectures, readings, and p ...

s (MOOCs) on

edX edX is an American For-profit higher education in the United States, for-profit massive open online course provider. It was founded by MIT and Harvard. It is a subsidiary of 2U (company), 2U. History edX was founded in May 2012 by the admi ...

, with topics including programming in Scratch for teachers and children. She self-published an e-book about the creation of games for children. In 2017, she started a program for

Rotterdam Rotterdam ( , ; ; ) is the second-largest List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city in the Netherlands after the national capital of Amsterdam. It is in the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of South Holland, part of the North S ...

elementary students to receive programming lessons. In 2020, Hermans launched the Hedy programming language, to teach children to use the

Python programming language Python is a high-level, general-purpose programming language. Its design philosophy emphasizes code readability with the use of significant indentation. Python is dynamically type-checked and garbage-collected. It supports multiple prog ...

. She is the author of ''The Programmer's Brain: What every programmer needs to know about cognition''.

Awards and honours

Hermans' online data analysis course was awarded the Wharton-QS gold education award for best education innovation project entry in Europe. Hermans won the SURF Education Award in 2017, SURF being the collaborative

Information and communications technology Information and communications technology (ICT) is an extensional term for information technology (IT) that stresses the role of unified communications and the integration of telecommunications (telephone lines and wireless signals) and computer ...

(ICT) organisation for Dutch education and research. In 2018, the Open Education Consortium awarded her the Open Education Award for Excellence. Also in 2018, Hermans won the Tech Inspirator Award at the Techionista Awards.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hermans, Felienne Living people 21st-century Dutch businesswomen 21st-century Dutch businesspeople Dutch women academics Academic staff of Leiden University Academic staff of the Delft University of Technology Delft University of Technology alumni Eindhoven University of Technology alumni Dutch women engineers 1984 births