At UCI’s 25th Annual Celebration of Teaching, held on April 26, Informatics Professor Crista Lopes was one of 13 UCI professors to be recognized as a Dean’s Honoree for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. Upon learning she had received the award, Lopes, who joined the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS) in 2002, says she was “honored and surprised.”

“I believe in learning by doing,” says Lopes, “so I see the role of the instructor as one of guiding the students to do the things that yield the most knowledge in the shortest amount of time.” When Lopes isn’t busy teaching, she’sexperimenting with new software tools and platforms, such as DéjàVu, a publicly available index of file-level code duplication in the GitHub repository.

Founded in 1992 through the UCI Division of Teaching Excellence and Innovation (DTEI), the Celebration of Teaching has recognized more than 300 professors, lecturers, and TAs for exemplary teaching.

— Shani Murray