Shimon Schocken

Shimon Schocken's keynotes reveal the Computer Science professor's childhood as one surrounded by nurturing parents who taught their child the importance of learning on his own. Growing up with autodidactic parents who didn't receive any formal schooling, Shimon Schocken understood the values of education but did not forget the lessons his parents taught him.

As the founding Dean of Efi Arazi School of Computer Science in Israel, he has taught many students who have moved on to create companies, which were later acquired by various international corporations such as Google, Microsoft, eBay and AOL. His teaching methods encourage self-learning in the classroom while still providing the necessary guidance required to bring out the students' natural ability and talent for learning.

Along with his colleague Noam Nisan, they created one of the most successful and famous curricula online called Nand2Tetris, a story that is often shared in Shimon Schocken's keynotes. The program took five years to perfect and requires students to build their own computer and platform from scratch. As soon as the initial course was over, students began selling their deconstructed accomplishments online, which resulted in a massive flow of interested individuals over the Internet.

Prior to teaching at Efi Arazi School of Computer Science, he was a tenured professor at New York University. He was also a visiting professor at Harvard University in 2005 and at Stanford University in 2012. He is also Chairman of the Israeli Ministry of Education's Computer Science Committee.