Connor Hillen

So who am I?

I'm a computer science and game design instructor in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. I received my Bachelor's and Master's in Computer Science at Carleton University, where my research focused on supporting computational creativity with data driven AI and quest generation in games through experimental dialogue systems utilizing strange emotionally entangled knowledge databases.

Teaching, games, and AI have always been my passions. Inspired by the first choose your own adventure game that I made in QBasic early on in elementary school alongside the tutoring I was doing at the time, I saw a vision of AI supported education, creativity, and using programming as a tool to do better. I first started teaching web applications development in Grade 7, co-authoring and supporting our highschool CS curriculum and technology stack in Grade 11, and spent most of my first year of undergrad volunteering to host group tutoring and review sessions for other first years.

Most of my undergrad was spent hosting academic and social events for the CS society, and eventually drafting up policies and constitutions as president. I was a long-time teaching assistant, and in my master's was eventually given the opportunity to design and run my own course on Agile game development, which I have been running for over five years now.

Now, I spend my time teaching, exploring modern AI and teaching approaches for CS, and teaching my cat all kinds of strange tricks.

What have I done?

For more structured info, feel free to check out my resume.

What sorts of side projects?

For lists, links, and images, check out my projects page.