Yong Joseph Bakos is the Program Lead and Instructor for Computer Science at OSU Cascades, and the Seven Peaks Ventures Faculty Scholar in CS Innovation. With a background in both the arts and software engineering, Yong pushes the boundaries of cross-disciplinary research and teaching. An Ohio native, Bakos previously served as the assistant department head of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department at Colorado School of Mines, where he taught for six years. Prior to OSU-Cascades, Bakos helped cultivate the Center of Creative Computation at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

A professional software engineer by trade, Bakos’ education is in art theory and practice (B.A., Northwestern University), and software engineering (M.S., Regis University); and he is completing his PhD in Computer Science from Southern Methodist University. His research interests include information-centric networks, software engineering, graphical user interfaces, operating systems, computer science education, and generative art. With over twenty-five years of experience, Bakos has worked with companies ranging from small startups to Apple. His musicianship has led him through collaborations as an artist and technologist in Chicago, Denver and Dallas, combining live code and music performance.