“An incredible, understanding teacher always full of tips!”

Michel Schinz currently teaches the Practice of object-oriented programming in which students improve their knowledge of Java and put it into practice by implementing a relatively large project, as well as an advanced course on compiler construction.

Schinz is described by his students as an incredible teacher, very understanding, invested in his work, attentive and available to students, and always full of tips. His course is very clear and his projects are always very creative and fun. The series of exercises are exciting.

He spoke to the IC School’s Tanya Petersen about how much he loves teaching and his career until now.

I completed my PhD in Computer Science in 2005 at EPFL, when I also began teaching an advanced course about compiler construction for master's degree students. In the private sector I have worked at CSEM as a Research Engineer and Kudelski as a Senior Software Engineer, where I designed and implemented a macro assembler embedded into Python as well as several tools to rewrite smartcard programs to improve their resilience against some classes of hardware attacks.

What does it feel like to win this important award?

I am very honored, of course, and also happy that students enjoy following my courses. Being really enthusiastic about a subject is key to learning it efficiently, so knowing that my students take pleasure in learning what I teach them gives me great satisfaction.

What do you like most about teaching and what do you find most rewarding?

I really enjoy interacting with students in general and seeing them progress over time is probably what I find the most rewarding. I am also lucky to teach a programming course for which I have to prepare a new project every year. This has allowed me to explore many fascinating subjects with my students — games, retro-computing, astronomy, cartography, and so on. Developing that project is something that I likea lot.

Do you think young people today learn differently to older generations and does teaching need to adapt?

To some degree yes, one obvious difference being that young people today tend to learn a lot of things by watching videos instead of reading books. While I don't think that videos should replace books, at least not in all situations, they are often an excellent complement. So, it makes sense to adapt our teaching to provide videos to our students, and one welcome consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic is that it forced us to do just that in a very short time.