Teaching

My teaching work focuses on approaching biological concepts through a mathematical lens. This often requires communicating mathematical concepts to an audience with a broad set of backgrounds, many of whom may not have strong quantitative training. I therefore emphasize geometric analyses and physical interpretations of mathematical models and approach mathematical results with concrete, hands-on simulations to help students develop strong foundation for their mathematical intuition.

I have been fortunate to work with excellent educators at Caltech and William and Mary who have allowed me to contribute to the design of their courses. During the 2021-2022 academic year, I worked as a coauthor with instructors Michael Elowitz and Justin Bois to continue developing the online textbook for the graduate-level Biological Circuit Design course. The textbook is still being continuously updated and can be found here.

During the 2015-2016 academic year, I and Andy Halleran jointly designed the first course on synthetic biology to be taught at the College of William and Mary, under the supervision of professor Margaret Saha. This course introduced the fundamental concepts of synthetic biology and principles of gene expression to undergraduates through guided reading and discussion of research papers. The reading list for the course can be found here (2016) and here (2017).

For more details on my other teaching experiences, please see my CV.