Teaching and Mentoring

Teaching

UW–Madison

  1. (Planned) Fall 2025: [Instructor] Introductory Probability (MATH331)
  2. Spring 2025: [Instructor] Introductory Probability (MATH331)
  3. Fall 2024: [Instructor] Elementary Matrix and Linear Algebra (MATH340)
  4. Spring 2024: [Instructor] Linear Algebra and Differential Equations (MATH320)
  5. Fall 2023: [Instructor] Linear Algebra and Differential Equations (MATH320)

KAIST

  1. Fall 2018, Spring 2019: [Teaching Assistant] Differential Equations and Applications (MAS201)
  2. Fall 2018: [Teaching Assistant] Introduction to Mathematical Biology (MAS480)
  3. Spring 2018: [Teaching Assistant] Linear Algebra (MAS212)
  4. Spring 2018: [Teaching Assistant] Introduction to Linear Algebra (MAS109)

Mentoring

UW–Madison

  1. June 2024 – present: Ella Buelling, a junior student at Edgewood High School
    2. - Mentoring a talented and passionate high school student. Working on connections between a hypergraph representation of biochemical reaction networks and metabolic control analysis.

KAIST

  1. Spring 2019: [Mentor] Undergraduate Research Program (URP)
    2. - Mentoring an undergraduate student. Discussed with and guided the student to investigate the total quasi-steady-state approximation for a competitive system. The student won a poster presentation prize at the 2019 KSIAM spring conference and a prize in the URP final evaluation.

Teaching Philosophy

    As a mathematician, I would like to share the beauty of mathematics to others, and as an applied mathematician, I would like to teach how useful mathematics is for solving real-world problems.
  1. Giving a motivating example before a formal statement. During my Ph.D. journey, one important aspect I learned is that I should show a motivating or intuitive example before I present a formal statement. For example, when I teach the singular value decomposition (SVD), I do not present the formula first, but I present an image compression, whose key principle is the SVD, to motivate audiences to learn the SVD. In addition, when I introduce my research about a non-Markovian system, I say, "If tomorrow's weather depends only on today's weather, it would be easier to forecast than when tomorrow's weather depends on not only today's weather but also those of the past few days." It makes audiences agree that a non-Markovian system is more challenging to analyze than a Markovian system.
  2. "No such thing as a stupid question." I believe this is an essential value in teaching. Every time I teach in Korea, students usually are too shy to ask questions. Thus, I always encourage students to ask a question. When I start the first class, I say, "Please don't hesitate to ask questions. You may feel like you are the only one who does not know the answer but that is never true. Moreover, if you are not sure about the answer, then everyone else is not sure about the answer as well, so it would be great to listen to my explanation once again. Your questions even could slow down the lecture in a meaningful way." This has always helped students feel more comfortable to knock on my door during office hours, so I have been able to communicate with them more efficiently.