Teaching Summary

I have had various teaching and instructing roles at undergraduate level teaching which allowed me to gain experience in and develop understanding of undergraduate teaching. I am able to teach all aspects of physical chemistry, in particular, I am able to conduct lectures and tutorials on topics such as classical thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics and mathematics for physical chemists. I am also able to teach physical organic chemistry.
I have also experience in conducting computational chemistry practical labs on topics such as applications of quantum mechanics, spectroscopy and chemical simulations.

Teaching Philosophy

I believe in allowing students to see the real life applications of the underlying concepts. For example, when introducing the topic of statistical mechanics, we can highlight the importance of using statistical mechanics to study real-world problems: in computational modelling, we typically set up our system containing one molecule, from which the energy levels can be computed. However, in a real-world system, there are many molecules (on the order of 10²³) from which macroscopic properties emerge. Using statistical mechanics, we are able to connect what we model for one molecule to the properties we get from a collection of gazillion molecules, thus greatly simplifying the modelling of real-world systems.
Individuals have varied learning needs. As such, I believe that effective teaching and learning begins with a conducive and open learning environment, where students and teachers can have open communications about their unique learning needs and expectations. Secondly, I believe that students need to take the initiatives and be in charge for their own learning, especially at the university level, where one of our goals is to foster life-long learning skills. Lastly, in a rapidly evolving world where knowledge gets updated at an unprecedented pace, to achieve the goal of self-directed learning, usually required at university level, or even much so after graduation, I believe as teachers, we should teach students methods for acquiring knowledge. As the Chinese saying that goes "授之以鱼不如授之以渔", it is better to teach a man how to fish, rather than giving him the fish.

Teaching Experiences

Stipendiary Lecturer in Physical Chemistry (Years 1 and 2), Exeter College, University of Oxford, 2017-2019

Physical and Theoretical Chemistry Laboratory Junior Demonstrator, Department of Chemistry, University of Oxford, 2016-2017

Class tutor for year 1 undergraduate course Physics for Chemists, Department of Chemistry, University of Oxford, 2016-2017

Personal Tutor Part-time, tutoring A level Maths, Biology and Chemistry and O level Maths and Sciences, Singapore (Jan 2010 - Sep 2011)