Teaching

Research Students

I am a research mentor to two outstanding undergraduate MIT physics students, Tung Tran and Lana Xu, with whom I work on various projects in Cosmology. Tung and I are currently writing up a paper, together with my research advisor Alan Guth, on the effects of neutrino decoupling on the formation of supermassive seeds of primordial black holes from hybrid inflation, stay tuned!

Physics Courses

During my graduate career, I have co-taught or TA-ed for ten semesters, for courses ranging from introductory undergraduate subjects such as Classical Mechanics to advanced graduate courses like General Relativity. In particular, I have now been a TA for a quantum theory course (quantum I, II, or graduate quantum computation) for six semesters, and a recitation instructor for graduate General Relativity for two.

Tutoring

I also have extensive experience as a private one-on-one tutor, through my position as Senior Tutor with the Cambridge Coaching Company since 2018. During my senior and junior years in high-school I was a one-on-one tutor for several students with special academic needs.

Original Classes

In my time at MIT, I have created and taught several original classes, which I have taught at MIT and at a local high-school to students from seventh through twelfth grades through the Educational Studied Program, including:

1. Physics of Electric Guitar

2. Typographical Number Theory: Proving Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem with the Achilles and the Tortoise

3. Venomous Snakes of Australia

4. The Physics of Rainbows

I have also co-created and taught a new workshop series for MIT Undergraduates in the Physics department (primarily juniors and seniors) looking to continue their physics education after college, titled “GAPS: Graduate Applications and Professional Strategies”, which successfully debuted in Fall of 2022.

Physics Classes

  • Taught in Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2020 and in Fall 2021 in the form of 8.04x (hybrid in-person/online).

  • Fall 2014. This course is the first class most MIT undergraduates take as physics majors, and focuses on waves physics like harmonic motion, resonance, Fourier analysis, and diffraction… all physics is secretly 8.03.

  • Fall 2019. Taught through an interactive curriculum called TEAL, this is the first of the required physics courses by all undergrads of all majors. It covers classical physics like Newton’s laws and their applications eg. uniform circular motion, pulleys, rotating frames, friction, orbits etc.

  • Fall 2018. A really fun class to TA, this course covers the basics of quantum mechanics and then jumps into gate-based quantum computation, such as algorithms for quantum communication, cryptography, and error correction. See Quantum Computation at MIT’s OCW

  • Spring 2019. This is the second of three semesters of quantum physics for physics majors, covering Dirac notation, harmonic oscillators, spin, EM interactions, Heisenberg and Schrodinger pictures, and addition of angular momentum amongst other fun stuff. I had the opportunity to cover a couple of the sections for this course as well.

  • Taught recitation sections for this course in Spring 2021 and (currently) for Spring 2023. This class, taught by Netta Engelhardt, moves very quickly and covers some pretty advanced theory by the end of the course. One of the plus sides is that I get to cover a lot of really beautiful material in recitation sections as well! GR is probably the most elegant of all physics theories and a lot of fun to teach and learn.

  • LEAPS was designed by Profs. Anna Frebel and Diane Rigos and teaches the professional skills necessary to succeed in a career in the sciences to senior graduate students and postdocs. This is a 2-part course covering one full term: the first part focuses on professional strategies and skills and the second on leadership. I was a co-instructor for this class in the Spring of 2023, where I gave lectures on topics such as science communication, effective CV and proposal writing, and dealing with conflict and communication in the workspace.

credit: XKCD comics