Education and supervision
I treat education as scientific training: students should be able to use mathematical tools, write clearly and work reproducibly. Assessment design matters because it sets expectations and determines what students practise.
Teaching and assessment
- Mathematics and modelling: making the link between formal methods and physical interpretation explicit.
- Writing and communication: scientific writing, structure and argument, and how to present uncertainty. See also my scientific writing seminars.
- Research-linked computing: students learn how real scientific codes behave in practice and how to interpret outputs.
- Assessment design: clear expectations, consistent marking, and materials that help staff and students.
Supervision
I supervise student projects in astrophysics and research computing. Example themes are listed on the projects page.
- Setting an achievable scope and delivering a usable result
- Helping students build an audit trail (notes, code, methods and assumptions)
- Practice in explaining results clearly, including limitations
Cambridge
I taught in Cambridge through the supervision system, typically one-hour sessions with two students, with written work submitted and discussed each week. I supervised across several courses:
- IA Mathematics for Natural Sciences
- Part IB Mathematics: Electromagnetism
- Part II Mathematics: Principles of Quantum Mechanics
- Part II Mathematics: Statistical Physics and Cosmology
Bonn
In Bonn I contributed to teaching and training across multiple semesters, including:
- Scientific Writing (course 6951)
- Stars and Stellar Evolution computing exercises (astro811)
- Seminar on Technical and Computational Aspects of Astronomy (course 6964)
- Binary Stars (astro8501)