Teaching and Mentoring

Teaching

• Spring 2027 (scheduled): IEMS 314 Nonlinear Optimization for Decision-Making
  • Instructor for an undergraduate course at Northwestern University.
• Winter 2027 (scheduled): IEMS 450-2 Mathematical Optimization II
  • Instructor for a graduate course at Northwestern University.
• October 2026: Research Talk at the IDEAL Get Ready for Research Workshop
  • Research talk on function-free optimization for undergraduates, University of Illinois Chicago, Chicago, IL.
  • For the talk, I built interactive pages that let undergraduates try comparison-based optimization themselves; see Interactive Demos.
• November 2025: Guest Lecture in 15.081 Introduction to Mathematical Programming
  • Topic: Large-Scale Linear Programming Using the Primal-Dual Hybrid Gradient Method.
• Winter 2024: 15.S60 Computing in Optimization and Statistics
  • Instructor for the advanced optimization sessions of a computing course during MIT January Independent Activities Period. The duties include designing lectures, creating teaching materials, and giving lectures.
  • Jupyter Notebook 1 Jupyter Notebook 2
• Fall 2022 and Fall 2023: 15.081 Introduction to Mathematical Programming (Teaching score: 6.8/7 feedback)
  • Head TA for MIT’s doctoral introductory optimization course (for ORC and other MIT PhD programs)
  • Recitation Notes Recitation Solutions (Permission Required)
  ⭐ I was voted as the "Best TA" in the ORC Superlatives voting in 2023 (photo) ⭐ "Best TA" again in 2024 (photo)
• Spring 2022: 15.071 The Analytics Edge (Teaching score: 6.4/7 feedback)
  • TA for MBA course in business analytics at Sloan School of Management.
• Online Course in Data Science and Business Analytics
  • Designed course materials for a new online course in data science and business analytics.
  • Supervisor: Robert Freund

Mentoring

PhD Students

• Hongpei Li – PhD student, Northwestern University (2026–present)
• Jinrui Huang – PhD student, Northwestern University (2026–present)

Students Mentored Before Northwestern

I informally mentored several students on research projects.

• Qipei Chen – Visiting undergraduate, UC Berkeley
• Zhenwei Lin – PhD student, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics (later became a postdoctoral researcher at Purdue University)
• Qiushi Han – Undergraduate, UIUC (later joined the PhD program at MIT)
• Chenghan Xie – Undergraduate, Fudan University (later joined the PhD program at Stanford)
• Jiacheng Guo – Undergraduate, Fudan University (later joined the PhD program at Princeton)
• Chengwenjian Wang – Undergraduate, Fudan University (later joined the Master program at ETH Zürich and the PhD program at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities)