I teach, mentor and design curricula in Data Science at the University of Washington. I am currently teaching INFO 370/371 and INFX 574/575. I co-developed, with Josh Blumenstock and Emma Spiro, the Data Science series for the graduate and undergraduate programs in the iSchool. This includes our core sequences for the MSIM and MLIS programs (INFX 572/573/574/575) and Informatics programs (INFO 370/371). We are currently designing new electives to build upon this core sequence.
I am actively involved in the Education Group at the eScience Institute. In collaboration with Magda Balazinska and department chairs across campus, we have developed a transcriptable option in Data Science. The idea is to (1) make data science courses available to any major and student on campus, (2) recognize students that have specialized in data science, and (3) leverage the strengths of our various departments at UW. Departments can design their own sequence of courses, depending on their needs and domain questions, but can leverage other courses and opportunities across campus. Currently, we have university approval or pending approval for the data science option in the following schools and departments: the iSchool, ACMS, Computer Science & Engineering, HCDE and Statistics. We are looking to add additional departments in subsequent years.
I am also on the steering committee for the new Masters Program in Data Science at UW. This is another multi-departmental data science program at UW. The committee has been in charge of developing the program, admissions and ongoing advisement for the program. We recently hired our new director of the program, Deborah Alterman, and enrolled our first class in the Fall of 2016. In addition, I have written a chapter with Jason Portenoy on the 'gold rush' in data science education across the country.
Carl Bergstrom and I have designed a new course that focuses on data reasoning. It is in response to the increased BS ('bad science') that we are seeing in academic discourse, especially in this new age of big data. The course will be initially aimed at first-year undergraduates, but our goal is to make the contents of the course freely available to anyone and everyone, inside and outside the university. We enourage you to visit our course website for more details.
- Undergraduate Data Science Option, eScience Education Working Group (2014 - present)
- Masters in Data Science, Profession & Continuing Education (2015 - present)
- Data Science Track, MSIM Program, Information School (2013 - present)
- Huckabay Fellowship, Center for Instructional Development and Research (2006 - 2007)
- Summer Teaching Institute, Seattle School District (Summer 2008)
- Howard Hughes RA for developing Experimental Evolutionary Ecology Lab (Summer 2006)
- Nominated for UW Distinguished Teaching Award (Fall 2017)
- Huckabay Fellowship, UW Graduate School (Winter 2007 - Summer 2007)
- Nominated for Ingrith Deyrup-Olsen Teaching Award (Spring 2007)
I advise post-docs, PhD students, Masters students and undergraduates working on projects in Data Science. Below are current and former students that have or are working on projects in big scholarly data, community detection, network analytics, and related areas. If you are interested in a project related to the Science of Science or Data Science, please feel free to contact me.
PhD Students (primary advisor):
- Jason Portenoy, iSchool (2014 - present) Scholarly Evaluation, Information Visualization
- Lavi Aulck, iSchool (2013 - present) Education Analytics, Machine Learning
PhD Students (co-advisor, committee):
- Alex Kale, Information School, UW (2017 - present)
- Lanu Kim, Department of Scoiology, UW (2017 - 2019)
- Benji Xie, Information School (2017 - present)
- Ryan McGee, Department of Biology (2015 - present)
- Yeaseul Kim, iSchool (2016 - present)
- Ray Hong, iSchool (2013 - present)
- Guanghua Chi (University of Berkeley, iSchool), iSchool (2015 - 2016)
- Amit Misra (Microsoft), Department of Astronomy (2013 - 2014)
PhD Students (GSR):
- Victoria Zayats, Electrical Engineering (2017 - present)
- Cyrus Rashtchian, Computer Science & Engineering (2016 - present)
- Kyungdahm Yun, School of Environment & Forest Services (2016 - present)
- Brandon Holt, Computer Science & Engineering (2015 - present)
- Taylor Scott, HCDE (2014 - present)
- Kristi Morton, Computer Science & Engineering (2015 - 2016)
- Michael Brooks, HCDE (2014 - 2015)
- Emad Soroush, Computer Science & Engineering (2014 - 2014)
Masters Students:
- Luke Rodriguez, iSchool (2017 - present) Differential Privacy
- Ian Wesley-Smith, iSchool (2015 - 2017) Scholarly Recommendation, Big Scholarly Data
- Capstone Project:Coursector (Audience Choice Award) | Nishant Sinha, Prerak Pradham, Mike Kelly, Colin Greene (2014 - 2015)
Undergraduate Students:
- Capstone Project: Snopes Article Triaging | Cole Chamberlin, Evan Frawley, Lucy Eun, Ethan Anderson (2017-2018)
- Husky Data Science Club (Ashlyn Opgrande, Arvind Krishnamoorthy), Faculty Advisor (2016 - present)
- Lia Kazakova, Informatics and Computer Science & Engineering (2016 - present)
- Patrick Spieker, Computer Science & Engineering (2016 - present)
- Capstone Project: Academic Journalism | Logan Walls, Isabelle Edwards, Tin Ho (2016)
- Capstone Project: CourseConnect | Jeff Giorgi, Ashley Dillinger, Evelyn Carlson, Natalie Wittenbrook, Narish Silpaki (2013 - 2014)
The internet is dramatically changing the world of Education. Students can easily access unlimited education resources—from online courses to freely available tutorials, books and lectures. In my field, especially, students can learn about data science, programming, and statistics without ever stepping foot in a formal classroom. So what does a formal education at a formal university provide nowadays? This is a question that drives my teaching philosophy.
I want to be as human a teacher as possible. In class, I can read students confusion, excitement or reticence. These cues can be used to engage the students in discourse, no matter how big the class. Whenever possible, I try to flip the classroom—provide students with the content and questions before class and then solve the problems together in class. I include examples that are current and relevant to the given classroom. I initiate group discussions and project-based learning and give immediate, real-time feedback.
I stive to build in-person classes that are worth attending by leveraging the human interaction element that online education has not replaced (at least yet). Online education is a great resource for students. I don't want to replace it; I complement it.
I reside on a campus because of teaching. It allows me to be the eternal student. Teaching is the ultimate show and tell, but it is not just from teacher to student. There exists a reciprocity of mentorship that only the unencumbered minds can offer. Who I am and where I am today is a reflection of my teachers, mentors and now my students. In some of my favorite classes, it was difficult to tell who was having more fun—the teacher or the students. I will continue to teach as long as this is true for me.
Masters Students:
- Maria George, MSIM (Fall, 2016), Spark in the Cloud
- Chaofan Han, MSIM (Fall, 2016) Machine Learning
- Wen Qin, MSIM (Fall, 2016) Machine Learning
- Elizabeth MacCready, MSIM (Summer 2016) Network Data
- Aditya Gandhi, MSIM (Spring 2016, Fall 2015) WSDM Data Competition
- Kyle Estlick, Mid-Career MSIM (Winter, Spring 2016) Chrome Extensions
- Mainak Ghosh, MSIM (Fall 2015) Author Disambiguation
- Aoron Yang, MSIM (Fall, 2015), Distributed Computing
- Teng Sun, MSIM (Fall, 2015), Distributed Computing
- Deepa Rao, MSIM (Spring 2015), Interactive Visualization
- Kelly Toskey, MLIS (Fall, 2014), Information Visualization in D3
- Terri Northcut, MLIS (Winter, 2014), Mapping Academic Migration
- Anne Nguyen, MLIS (Winter, 2014), Mapping Academic Migration
Undergraduate Students
- Olga (Lia) Kazakova, Informatics (Fall Quarter, 2016)
- Katherine Zhu, Informatics (Spring, 2016)
- UW Center for Learning and Undergraduate Enrichment (Winter 2008)
- CIDR Conference Instructor (Fall 2006, Fall 2007)
- Huckabay Panel Member (Feb. 21, 2007)
- Greenhouse Tour Guide (Winter 2006 - 2009)
- Medicinal Herb Garden Docent (Fall 2006 - 2009)
- High School Biology (Spring 2006)
I spent several years teaching tennis. I was the Assistant Coach for Utah State University Men's and Women's Tennis team from 2000 - 2002. During that same time, I instructed players of all ages and abilites in community programs or local tennis clubs. Although not the typical classroom with books and papers, the tennis court provided a different kind of medium in which to develop my teaching and mentoring skills. I have found these skills to be paticularly useful in the actual classroom—most notably, in tailoring drills to a student's specific needs. Students have different strengths, different backgrounds and different perspectives. The challenge at a big university is scaling classes while at the same time preserving customized learning.
Faculty Fellows, UW Center for Teaching and Learning (Sept. 9-12, 2013)
Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Symposium. University of Washington, Seattle, WA
The Missing Link
PDF(April 2007)
J.D. West, K. Hall