Graduate courses
MIT course 16.715: Aerospace, Energy, and the Environment
I co-instruct the MIT graduate level course on Aerospace, Energy, and the Environment. In this graduate level class we explore why do aircraft emit pollutants, what are the pollutants, how do these interact with the earth’s atmosphere to result in climate change and degraded surface air quality. We build on foundational concepts (year 1 undergraduate level) in chemistry and physics to understand the impacts as well as cutting edge solutions that the scientific and engineering community is proposing. We learn about the policy mechanisms that are currently being used to limit aviation’s environmental damage as well as those that might be used in the future. We also learn a few economic concepts that allow us to quantify the environmental impact of aviation and assess novel technological solutions and policy proposals.
Undergraduate course
MIT course 16.50: Introduction to Aerospace Propulsion
I have TA’d the MIT undergraduate course on aerospace propulsion several times during my PhD. I have also developed interactive teaching and learning tools for use in this class. The goal was to make the math less daunting and tedious for students and instead focus on the conceptual understanding. These tools enabled them to look at trends and build intuition. I built tools to run “virtual experiments” to highlight fundamental concepts such as flow choking, thermodynamic cycle analysis, velocity triangles in compressors and a digital “compressor rig”.
MIT affiliates (need kerberos) can access these jupyter notebooks and exercises here. Screen recordings of the digital tools are below.
Introduction to compressible flow choking
Service and volunteer teaching
Innovation League
I was a volunteer teacher at Boston based Innovation League to teach an after-school program for first-generation high-school girls and encourage them to pursue STEM careers.
My course covered fundamentals of thermodynamics using the jet engine as a an overarching example to walk through various concepts. The course description and material are below.
Course description
Have you ever heard the roar of a jet engine when you were on an aeroplane and wondered how it works? A staggering number of parts have to come together to seamlessly work to produce mindboggling forces that propel an aircraft into the air. Wouldn’t it be cool to know how to build a jet engine? In this course you’ll learn the fundamental physics and engineering concepts that go into designing a jet engine.