Learning is a Journey,
Not Just a Destination.

I dropped my first CS class.

True story. In high school, I took Computer Science because my friends told me good things about it. It didn't click. I dropped it (before I could fail) and took another period of Orchestra instead..

Fast forward to UT Austin. As a Biomedical Engineering major, I nearly switched majors my first semester because I was terrified of the required programming courses - I didn't know engineering required programming! I stuck with the major (luckily my mom talked me out of switching) and managed to pass with an A. I learned something: sometimes you need something more than just hard work.

To solve the hardest problems—whether in healthcare or cybersecurity—I had to face the subject I ran away from. That struggle didn't just teach me to code; it taught me how to learn.

Trust But Verify

In a world of AI and Big Data, my teaching philosophy is simple: Don't just trust the output.

Whether we are calculating reaction times in Physics or analyzing datasets in CS, I teach students to look for the "messy data." I teach them that an algorithm is only as good as the human who wrote it. We don't just solve for X; we ask who decided X was the variable to measure?

This approach led me to Washington D.C., where I served as an Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow (2024-2025) at the Department of Homeland Security (CISA). I worked to reshape how cybersecurity is taught across the nation, ensuring students are prepared for a future where "Secure by Design" is the standard, not an afterthought.

What I'm Doing Now

I am finishing my Master's in Computer Science at UT Austin while building this platform in public. From hiking the Shenandoahs to making dumplings (badly) with friends, I believe that to be a great engineer, you first have to be a curious human.