Giovanni Serafini

Giovanni Serafini joined the chair of Prof. Dr. Juraj Hromkovic on July the 1st 2005 as lecturer, mentor and student adviser in the Computer Science Teaching Diploma Program. Giovanni is the responsible lecturer for the course Subject Didactics of Computer Science I and co-lecturer in the course Subject Didactics of Computer Science II. He supervises didactic students conceiving teaching materials, organizes the teaching internships at schools and is responsible for a part of the relating examination lessons.

Giovanni's research interests rely on the impressive but actually underestimated contribution of computational thinking to school education, with a particular focus on the effects of teaching programming to primary school children.

After completing his diploma degree (MSc) in Computer Science at ETH Zurich, Giovanni joined a life insurance company as a software engineer and later acted as a network security consultant. In 2003 he was appointed deputy head of the Computer Science Diploma Program, deputy head of the IT-Security research group, lecturer for applied cryptography as well as member of the experts board at the former Hochschule für Technik Zürich (now ZHAW, Zurich University of Applied Sciences). Giovanni holds a Certificate of Teaching Ability in Computer Science of ETH Zurich and held appointments as external lecturer at the Università della Svizzera Italiana, the Interstaatliche Hochschule für Technik Buchs and the Liceo Artistico Zurich.

Giovanni is a member of the Swiss Olympiad in Informatics (SOI), a programming contest for young people under 20 years of age, which elects the Swiss delegation for the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI). Furthermore, he is a member of the board of the Swiss Computer Science Teaching Association (SVIA) and he represents ETH Zurich in the Education Commission of ICTswitzerland.