SES MicroMasters Teaching Assistants
A growing number of SES students are choosing to work with the IDSS online MicroMasters Program in Statistics and Data Science through Teaching Assistantships (TAs). Being a MicroMasters TA is a great opportunity to gain valuable teaching experience. The typical TA job involves answering discussion forum questions on course content from learners around the world, developing course material (e.g., data analysis projects, lecture notes, exercises), and conducting live recitation sessions.
Read below about the various ways SES students are contributing to the success of our worldwide MicroMasters program, as well as providing hands-on support to our educational partners. You can read more about their work in our Q&As with some IDSS Teaching Assistants.
Marie-Laure Charpignon
During the spring and summer of 2020, Marie worked as a TA helping to develop course content for a new elective in Statistics, Computation, and Applications. Her outstanding research skills and experience in data science, along with leadership qualities, helped push the course development in the right direction.
Andy Haupt
Andreas Haupt is a doctoral student in the Social and Engineering Systems Program, researching the Data Economy, tools and systems for data pricing, and strategic human-machine interaction. He holds Master’s degrees in Economics and Mathematics, and Bachelor’s degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science. In the Spring term of 2021 Andy Haupt has applied his teaching experience of two years to providing recitation sessions and tailored support to the Cohort 2 graduate students in the UTEC program in Data Science based in Uruguay.
Yan Jin
During the summer of 2019, Yan was the first SES student to work on content development for the new elective Statistics, Computation and Applications. Her research interests in robust distributed learning, corruption detection on networks, mechanism design, and graph signal processing, as well as her teaching experience, allowed her to make foundational contributions to the early course development.
Dimitris Konomis
Dimitris first worked on the MicroMasters program by helping as forum moderator in the 6.86x Machine Learning course in the summer of 2019. In the summer and fall of 2020, Dimitris conducted live recitations for learners from Uruguay, who were enrolled in 6.431x through the IDSS educational partnership with the UTEC Programa en DataScience. His experience as a TA for classes in machine learning, deep learning and probability theory is proving to be very beneficial to our online learners. In summer 2021, Dimitris moved to the Aeronautics and Astronautics program at MIT.
Hanwei Li
During the summer of 2020, Hanwei pioneered a second cohort of learners from Peru who were enrolled in the Micromasters through the IDSS educational partnership with Aporta. His extensive knowledge and experience in data analysis projects brought both thought-provoking theoretical exercises and practical hands-on coding sessions to the live weekly recitations that he conducted. A passion for teaching also led him to explore new ways to engage the learners in the digital setting. In addition, he consulted the very first cohort of Aporta students on their NGO data analysis projects.
Yi (Alicia) Sun
Alicia is a fifth-year Ph.D student working in Data to AI Lab at MIT LIDS. Her research interests are designing machine learning algorithms that are robust and reliable as well as aligned with societal values. Alicia is serving as TA in the Fundamentals of Statistics course for Cohort 3 UTEC Program in Data Science earners who are currently on track to complete the program in the Fall of 2022. Alicia is is involved in gaining teaching experiences through multiple teaching approaches such as Recitation and NGO sessions.
Michelle Vaccaro
Michelle Vaccaro joined SES in 2021. Since coming to MIT, Michelle has been involved in teaching live recitations for Cohort 3 learners from Uruguay, who are part of the IDSS educational partnership with the UTEC Programa en DataScience. Michelle’s teaching experience includes serving as a teaching fellow at Harvard. She strives to employ a student-centered approach to teaching that fosters positive and productive learner interactions with the course content, instructors, and peers.
Max Vilgalys
Max was with the MicroMasters team since the summer of 2020 when he served as TA for 6.431x Probability—the Science of Uncertainty and Data. Max conducted live recitations for a third cohort of Peruvian learners, enrolled in the MicroMasters through the IDSS educational partnership with Aporta. He developed interesting instructional material, exercises, and live polls for these sessions, in collaboration with other recitation instructors. His interest and knowledge in statistics led to high quality content in his teaching. Max worked with Uruguay learners who were taking 6.419 Data Analysis: Statistical Modeling and Computation in Applications. He designed recitation content that encompasses theory and practical applications to enrich the course experiences.
Yuxin Xiao
Yuxin worked as a TA supporting Aporta Cohort 5 learners in the 14.310x Data Analysis in Social Science course in the summer of 2022. These learners from Peru were enrolled in the MicroMasters through IDSS’s educational partnership with Aporta. Yuxin’s research focus area is machine learning for healthcare. Prior to SES, Yuxin received an MS in Machine Learning from Carnegie Mellon and a BS in Computer Science, Statistics, and Mathematics from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Silun Zhang
Silun joins the MicroMasters SDS program in 2021, is involved with teaching 6.419x and has worked on 6.431x. He is also a Postdoctoral Associate with IDSS, MIT, working on research projects in large-scale network control and computation. Silun holds a Ph.D. degree in Applied Mathematics specialized in Optimization and Systems Theory. During his Ph.D. period, he served as a TA for three courses and gained extensive experience in teaching theoretical materials in a highly interactive and heuristic manner.
