Fifteen PhD students receive STI Teaching Assistant Awards

The STI Teaching Assistant Award, introduced in 2022, is an initiative of the School of Engineering to reward the extraordinary involvement of PhD students in lectures given in the bachelor and master cycles of the four sections of the school.

Every semester, some 400 School of Engineering PhD students take on teaching duties. The demand is so great that around 40% of them are called upon to support classes led by other laboratories. Each semester, the awards are attributed by the award committee based on nominations by the teachers.

Congratulations to the 15 students below who were selected below to receive the award for fall 2024!

School of Engineering Best Teaching Assistants, fall 2024

• Seven students were awarded for their work on the course Microfabrication Technologies, for "being instrumental in the creation of student-led tutorials, and for chairing the sessions and creating the set of questions":
  • Berke Erbas, Pol Torres Vila, Chenxiang Zhang, and Emilio Fernández Lavado of the Microsystems Laboratory, led by Juergen Brugger; Camilla Minzoni of the Doctoral Program in Materials Science and Engineering
  • Laurine Kolly of the Laboratory for Soft Bioelectronic Interfaces, led by Stephanie Lacour
  • Tugçe Delipinar of the Laboratory for Advanced Fabrication Technologies, led by Vivek Subramanian

• Igor Reshetnikov of the Energy Transport Advances Lab, led by Zhengmao Lu, was awarded for the course Thermodynamics and energetics, for "playing a pivotal role in ensuring the smooth operation of the course, managing a team of 17 assistants, and for setting up the the automatic correction system for the exam session".

• Sthithpragya Gupta of the Learning Algorithms and Systems Laboratory, led by Aude Billard, was awarded for the course Machine learning programming, for "setting up the programming part of the midterm exam and offering constructive and efficient means to modify the session".

• Gaia Stella Bolognini of the of the Laboratory for Quantum Gases, led by Jean-Philippe Brantut, was awarded for the course General physics, for "performing for each exercise series a complete video to explain to students the possible traps, pitfalls and tricks".

• Matteo Quinzi and Aleksandr Poliukhin of NCCR MARVEL, and Luca Righetti of the Theory and Simulation of Materials Lab, both led by Nicola Marzari, were awarded for the course Fundamentals of solid-state materials, for "crafting targeted exercises for the class and making sure the students received a full educational experience".

• Stavros Athanasiou of the Nanophotonics and Metrology Laboratory, led by Olivier Martin, was awarded for the course Selected topics in advanced optics, for "entirely redesigning 12 very complete and ambitious Jupyter notebooks providing a rich and coherent learning experience".

• Adrián Fernández Carnicero of the Microwaves and Antennas Group, led by Anja Skrivervik, wa awarded for the course Introduction aux microondes et aux antennes, for "proposing very interesting simulation exercises and including small tutorials for each exercise".