Dr. Danny Caballero

Biography

Marcos D. "Danny" Caballero is a Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Department of Computational Mathematics, Science Engineering at Michigan State University, where he holds the Lappan-Phillips Chair in Physics Education. He co-directs the Physics Education Research Lab and serves as a principal investigator in the Learning Machines Lab. He conducts research in the newly-founded Computational Education Research Lab and holds an appointment as a research faculty member at the University of Oslo’s Center for Computing Science Education. Danny's research focuses on how tools and science practices affect student learning in physics and computational science. He investigates the conditions that support or inhibit learning and emphasizes the integration of cognitive and sociocultural theories to improve instruction. After earning a B.S. in physics from the University of Texas at Austin in 2004, Danny worked on opto-microfluidics transport control experiments at Georgia Institute of Technology, where he earned an M.S. in physics, shifted his focus to physics education, and founded the Georgia Tech Physics Education Research group. He completed his Ph.D. in physics education at Georgia Tech in 2011, focusing on computational modeling instruction. Subsequently, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he transformed upper-division physics courses into active learning environments. His work examines how students learn to use mathematics and computing tools, from fine-grained analyses of computational ideas to broader discussions on educational values related to computation across departments.

Research Interests

Courses