Teaching
Teaching, at university level or for the general public (see my Outreach page for more details), has an important place in my professional career as astrophysicist. My current position (faculty equivalent) comes with many opportunities to fulfill my goal to foster the curiosity of fledging students, help them finding the best career path, and teach them important concepts such as scientific thinking, writing, and presenting, to equip them with all they need to become successful scientists.
Visiting Graduate Students
As a research faculty, we do not have a graduate student program at Caltech/IPAC. However, we offer a competitive IPAC Graduate Student Fellowship, with which students can work with our faculty on a research project for 6 months. The students get paid to cover moving and living expenses. This fellowship is a unique opportunity to pursue research in the vibrant city of Pasadena (also called NASAdena), a geographical hub of excellent science connecting Caltech, Carnegie, and the JPL. Most of the time, visiting graduate students will publish their project in a renowned journal. Depending on funding, 2-3 students are accepted each year. In addition to this, I co-mentor students from other universities through collaborative projects. A list of my current and past graduate students can be found on my Research Group page.
SURF Undergraduate Students
The Caltech Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships (SURF) program gives national and international undergraduate students the opportunity to conduct research during 10 weeks under the guidance of experienced mentors working at the frontier of their fields. The students join group meetings, workshops, and seminars, hence get to experience the everyday scientific environment. I had the opportunity to mentor several SURF students with physics/astronomy and computer science majors. Approximately half of the SURFs I mentored continued working with me to eventually publish their project in an renowned journal. See my Research Group page for a list of current and past SURF undergraduate students.
FIELDS Undergraduate Students
The Fellowships and Internships in Extremely Large Data Sets (FIELDS) started in 2015 by Prof. Mobasher at the University California Riverside (UCR), gives minorities underrepresented in STEM fields the opportunity to work for 10 weeks in research groups at Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). I had the opportunity to mentor the one excellent undergraduate student with computer science major. The project helped her to find a job in a competitive large company. For more details on my FIELDs undergraduate students, visit my Research Group page.
Workshops
Workshops are ideal to efficiently reach a large audience at various career levels. I contributed to many different workshops, some of which I have led myself together with a great team.
- Machine Learning Workshop II (AAS #237 - 2021): This workshop was a follow-up of the previous workshop held at the 2020 meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS). Also this workshop was a success with more than 110 attendees eager to learn about machine learning. Due to the meeting being virtual, this workshop extended over two days. In this workshop, material was covered in more depth and at a more basic level, which was one of the demands that crystalized out of the previous workshop. This workshop was fully organized and led by myself, more information can be found on the workshop webpage.
- Machine Learning Workshop I (AAS #235 - 2020): The goal of this workshop held at the yearly meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) was to open the door to various machine learning techniques (supervised and unsupervised) for astronomers of different career levels. With more than 80 participants, this 1-day workshop was very successful. Next to short and interesting introductory presentations, the attendees were encouraged follow the hands-on tutorials during the workshop using Jupyter Notebooks, which run via the Amazon Web Services. This workshop was fully organized and led by myself, more information can be found on the workshop webpage.
Classroom Teaching
During my Ph.D. at ETH Zurich, I had the opportunity to teach introductory classes in physics and astrophysics to Bachelor undergraduate students.
- Physics I: In this course, students learn the basic aspects of Physics with an emphasis on classical mechanics. It also teaches skills for solving physical problems.
- Astrophysics I: In this introductory course, the students develop knowledge of basic concepts in astrophysics such as the physics of planets, stars, galaxies, and the Universe. This includes the basic concepts of growth of structure in the Universe and the formation of galaxies, the formation of stars and radiative transfer, and the formation of planets through Toomre instabilities.
- Astrophysics II: The course examines various topics in astrophysics with an emphasis on physical processes occurring in an expanding Universe. The students learn about the Robertson-Walker metric, the Friedmann models, the thermal history of the Universe including Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, and introduction to Inflation, and the growth of structure through gravitational instability to the formation of galaxies.
- Astroweek: In this advanced lab course, students learn how to formulate an astronomical research project, write a research proposal, and perform the observations including data analysis. The lab takes place in the Swiss alps (Diavolezza, 3000 meters above sea level) and the students can observe with a variety of telescope at optical and radio wavelengths.