David Touretzky

David Touretzky is a Research Professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Department of Computer Science. His research focuses on robotics education, computational neuroscience, and developing accessible programming frameworks like Tekkotsu for undergraduate robotics instruction. He creates affordable mobile manipulators for classroom use and designs K-12 curricula teaching computational thinking through AI idioms and state machines.

Research interests include:

• Robotics software frameworks for education
• K-12 programming pedagogy
• Affordable educational robotics platforms
• Neural network education for youth
• Computer vision and manipulation systems

His publications demonstrate a consistent focus on AI and robotics education, particularly knowledge transfer from university to K-12 settings. Recent work explores co-design approaches with teachers and game-based learning to make AI concepts accessible to younger students.