Zero Cost Hero Andrew White

Congratulations as well to Andrew White, associate professor of chemical engineering, who is part of the River Campus Library’s new cohort of “zero cost heroes”–instructors and faculty who have chosen to select or create course materials that are free for their students. Andrew is the first recipient of the River Campus Libraries Open Education Resource (OER) Grant, which will enable him to continue working on his open textbook, Deep Learning for Molecules and Materials.

While there are already many resources about deep learning, most of them exist behind a paywall, Andrew explains, and there are none that focus specifically on chemistry and materials science. The project is also unique in that it is a living textbook. That means the text can be consistently updated to keep up with the rapid growth of deep learning technology.

The textbook is accessible to all learners. By engaging several of his PhD students in the project, Andrew is not only creating an OER, he’s engaging his students in open pedagogy, which makes them creators as well as consumers of information. You can take a look at the textbook in its current iteration and keep up with Andrew by following him on Twitter: @andrewwhite01.