Teaching Statement –

My teaching philosophy is built on the idea that a university degree should do more than instill simple knowledge; it should build intellectual curiosity, thought and audacity in students to enable them to become researchers themselves. While lectures are usually just given, I see them as an opportunity to create an environment where students learn to approach complex problems in tractable ways, engage with intellectual challenges, and grow into their own passions. This is done not simply by conveying facts, but by mentoring individual potential in an inclusive and collaborative environment, fostering an interest in challenging problems, and empowering students to truly push the limits of their own knowledge.

One of the most powerful assets that undergraduates bring to research is that they don’t know what is impossible yet. My own research trajectory was launched by a simple question in my mind of ‘how hard could it be?’, when my then supervisor probably thought it impossible to achieve. Yet, getting the support necessary in this situation and enabling me to explore a high-risk, high-reward problem was highly formative, and showed me clearly that with the right kind of mentorship, the impossible may just be possible. In my own mentoring, I strive to follow this ideal and create a safe environment for this kind of ambitious exploration. Mentors to students should not be gatekeepers to degrees, but collaborative guides that help students find their way through challenging problems. This process requires a clear design for a project, clear milestones for students, and making sure that the final outcome, even if the results are negative from a quantifiable view, leads to personal growth.

These ideas must also inform how feedback is provided to students, both in the classroom and when mentoring individual students, be it for research or questions on a project. Feedback is not a monologue but a dialogue meant to build students up, not to tear them down. While constructive criticism is a universal concept, its delivery must be tailored to the environment and the individual and their needs. Some students may require little guidance, while other students may have their own individual struggles that require creating flexible and open collaboration and sympathetic communication. In my experience, this person-centered approach to mentorship not only empowers students to deliver great results but also builds their resilience and confidence, which is as vital as the academic outcome.

This consideration not only applies to individual interactions, but also to the lectures as a whole. In a historically unequal area, such as mechanical engineering and computer science, this is even more important and requires a proactive effort to reduce barriers to knowledge and growth. This involves both the curriculum and making sure the lecture material is not biased or one-sided in how it presents the history and state of research, and the way students can interact with the curriculum. It is crucial that students always feel heard and that they can ask questions and make comments without worrying about being ridiculed or denigrated because of who they are or what their question is or how they ask it.

My commitment to creating accessible and empowering learning environments extends beyond individual mentoring; I am passionate about building the foundational frameworks that enable students to learn by doing.I see building robust educational tools as a tangible and scalable form of teaching. At my current university, I led a project to overhaul the decades-old, Windows-only codebase for our game physics course. We developed a modern, cross-platform WebGL framework to reduce student frustration and open up new creative possibilities. This was not just a technical update, but a pedagogical one; I managed a student assistant, who has since joined our group as a PhD student, to help build the system, and we co-developed new tutorials, guides, and exercises to accompany it. This is a direct example of removing barriers, creating equitable access to modern tools, and empowering students to focus their energy on solving interesting problems, not on fighting with outdated software.

My overall philosophy is also well-suited to the educational shift brought by emerging technologies like Large Language Models (LLMs). Students will inevitably use these tools, so rather than attempting to police them, my approach is to create a learning environment where the most valuable work is inherently human. In-person discussion, presenting and defending one’s ideas, and working through problems in teams require more than just rote memorization and prompting. Furthermore, these tools are a potential avenue for equity. An LLM can serve as a private, non-judgmental sounding board, allowing students to build confidence by refining a question or concept before bringing it to someone. This can be particularly empowering for students who might otherwise hesitate to speak up and fosters a more inclusive intellectual community, and breaks down barriers of entry.

Based on my own diverse research background in several fields, including computer science and engineering, I am certain that my own unique perspective can offer an opportunity for students to connect with the curriculum from a variety of perspectives, giving more students an opportunity to approach a traditionally challenging field, such as fluid mechanics. Furthermore, this background would also provide students who are only familiar with the traditional perspectives with an opportunity to grow and see other perspectives on problems that seem ordinary to them. For example, insights from real-time animation and how perception and accuracy are balanced in visual effects can provide a new way to appreciate numerical schemes and provide interesting questions to students on realism versus reality, or how machine learning can be used within intelligent numerical systems to provide reliable and novel solutions, which are important insights to encourage at an early stage for students, to enable a strong next generation of researchers at wherever I end up.