Teaching and Mentoring


Teaching and mentoring have played an important role in my academic experience. I am passionate about teaching, and regard my role as teacher and educator as an integral part of our profession that also strongly interacts with my role as researcher.} Indeed, I have encountered some of the best research questions in the classroom setting. My teaching repertoire at NYU includes three classes: one grad level (Stars and Stellar Explosions) and two undergraduate level (“CORE: From Quarks to Cosmos” for non-majors and non-scientist undergrads and “Observational Astronomy” for undergrads that includes an additional lab component with real telescopes!) – all of which I have immensely enjoyed teaching!

During Spring 2013, I initiated and co-organized the NYU Physics and Astrophysics Stats seminar, for which all informal seminar were recorded and are freely available on YouTube.

Even earlier, throughout my graduate and postdoctoral career, I pursued a variety of educational and mentoring activities that I have found extremely rewarding and that allowed me to formulate and refine my own teaching and mentoring style. I was a Teaching Fellow for a number of introductory astronomy courses for non-majors: at Harvard University for Science A-35 “Matter and the Universe”(Spring 2002 & 2003) and Science A-47 “Cosmic Connections” (Fall 2005), and at UC Berkeley for Astronomy 10 “General Astronomy” (Fall 2000). I received numerous teaching awards and was invited twice to lecture at the Teaching Conference (2004, 2005) held at the Harvard Bok Center for Teaching and Learning.

I also served as a Mentor for Women in Science at Harvard-Radcliffe, (WISHR) during 2003-2005 and was on the board of the Harvard Grad Women in Science and Engineering 2005 – 2007. At Berkeley, I was a mentor with the Society for Women in the Physical Sciences (2007 – 2008). Beyond my mentoring and outreach activities (see CV), I have led professional development events for graduate students on e.g., How to give a Good Talk (My & Mo’s presentation) (as part of the GradStudent-Postdoc-Seminars at UC Berkeley), co-organized Women in Astronomy chats at UC Berkeley and co-founded “Astro Women Cookies” at Harvard.