Nick Toothman is the 2021 Alumni Rising `Runner for the School of Natural Sciences, Mathematics & Engineering.
Nick Toothman’s career in computer science started with a love of video games.
His dad gave him his old Nintendo, and soon the joy of playing games on the console turned into curiosity.
“I wanted to know why they were so magical,” Toothman said of the games. “I wanted to understand how they actually worked.”
Since then, Toothman has earned his bachelor’s degree in computer science from CSUB, secured his doctorate from UC Davis, and begun his second year teaching a variety of computer science classes at CSUB.
Toothman’s approach to teaching mixes lessons learned from both his parents. His mom, who taught aerobics to seniors, was good at recognizing the pace at which her students were learning. His dad, a karate instructor, brought great enthusiasm to every class.
“There’s a lot less shouting and punching,” Toothman said of his teaching style. “But coming into class with excitement, and trying to instill that in your students, is something I try to do.”
Toothman grew up in Bakersfield, graduated from Liberty High and enrolled in CSUB. He chose his hometown campus because it was economical, but soon fell in love with it. He’s particularly grateful to the faculty members who encouraged him and the school tech competitions that stoked creativity and collaboration among students of different disciplines including computing, art and music.
Toothman also interned for State Farm during his CSUB years, developing new database systems. It taught him what work life could look like after graduation, and proved to State Farm that there was a lot of student talent to tap at CSUB.
“Over time they started hiring more and more computer science students because the first ones had worked out so well,” he said, referring to himself and a classmate who interned with him.
Interested in teaching at a university, Toothman skipped a master’s program and went straight for his PhD at UC Davis in 2010.
He was interested in his advisor’s research blending computer graphics and animation with theater performance. Toothman spent his first year studying non-verbal communication with gestures and generating animation clips with motions based on characters’ personality types.
“So if someone is extroverted, are they making sweeping gestures?” he said as an example. “Or are they keeping things closer to their center of mass?”
That turned into an interest in human-computer interaction, how the physical acts of working with computers affect creativity and ease of use. He wanted to develop ways of doing computing work that didn’t involve sitting in a chair all day, such as creating 3-D graphics through virtual reality devices that make use of the whole body — not just a keyboard and mouse.
Toothman would like to continue and broaden that research to include using virtual reality technology to teach when professors and students can’t share the same space — such as during a global pandemic.
After earning his PhD in 2020, Toothman looked at whether to pursue a career in the private business sector, which he’d gotten experience in while interning for State Farm, Amazon, Microsoft and Oculus, or in academia. He chose the later out of a desire to teach and continue his research.
CSUB had a job opening, and he took it.
“There were some personal reasons for coming back,” Toothman said. “But a lot of it was knowing that CSUB gave me so much, and I want to be able to provide that for whomever comes after me.”
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