Teaching Statement
Ashutosh V. Kotwal
Duke University
April 23, 2009
In this statement I will describe my teaching and mentoring activities since receiving
tenure in 2005.
For the period Fall 2004 through Fall 2006 (two and half years) I held the position of
co-leader of the CDF Offline Analysis and Computing Project at the CDF experiment.
Due to the level and nature of responsibility entailed, I needed to maintain a substantial
physical presence at Fermilab. As a result, I was not teaching during this time, and
Fermilab had reimbursed Duke University for my academic salary to release me from
teaching responsibilities.
My term ended in Fall 2006 and I started teaching again at Duke in Spring 2007.
Since then I have taught the Introductory Physics course for students planning to study
medicine or life sciences, the graduate-level first year course in Mathematical Methods
for the Physical Sciences, and I have created and implemented a new course for undergraduates called “Research Skills in Physics”. I also conducted the graduate research
seminar course.
The experience and feedback obtained from teaching and designing these courses has
been valuable and will guide my future teaching methods.
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1
Introductory Physics - Electromagnetism and Optics
During Spring 2007, I taught three recitation sections of the Introductory Physics
course on electromagnetism and optics. Recitation sections, with about 20 students
each, follow up on lectures by discussing the material in depth in two-hour sessions.
Students were given a short quiz on the day’s material at the end of each session.
I organized each session as follows. I started by explaining the solution to the quiz
from the previous session. This was followed by a review of the day’s material in a
question-and-answer format. I found that the students appreciated a quick explanation
of questions and doubts they have. Longer problems were then assigned to small groups,
who presented their solutions to the class. I would then discuss each of the solutions.
This format created a lot of interaction, which allowed me to emphasize the concepts
that students had some difficulty with. Discussion problems were carefully pre-selected
to encompass the key concepts and convey them clearly. Whenever possible, I used the
myriads of electromagnetic and optical phenomena that the students were aware of from
everyday life, as well as applications and devices they are familiar with, as examples to
illustrate concepts.
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Graduate Core Course - Mathematical Methods
in the Physical Sciences
The first-year graduate course in Mathematical Methods in the Physical Sciences is
one of the core required courses in the graduate curriculum. I taught this course in Fall
2007 and 2008 (and will teach it in Fall 2009) using Donald A. McQuarrie’s textbook. I
covered special functions, infinite series and convergence, ordinary and partial differential
equations, eigenfunction methods, Sturm-Liouville theorem and propagators, curvilinear
coordinates and differential operators, fourier and laplace transforms, complex variables,
contour integration and conformal transformations, and probability and statistics.
My goal in teaching this course was threefold. First, to provide the students a solid
foundation in mathematical concepts and techniques used in their graduate coursework.
They should become thoroughly familiar with this material so that they are able to
deal with rigorous mathematical treatment of physics problems. Ultimately, in their
physics coursework I want their focus to be on understanding and applying the physics
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concepts, and not get lost in the details of the mathematics. By being conversant in the
language of mathematics, they should be able to absorb better the concepts of physics
being conveyed in this language. Second, I used the opportunities to illustrate the
applications of mathematical techniques to different areas of physics. Third, lectures
were accompanied by computer laboratory sessions to teach Mathematica. Students
learnt how to use Mathematica to solve problems and also use Mathematica to gain
insight into the solutions.
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Research Skills in Physics
While the undergraduate curriculum includes the full complement of theoretical
physics instruction and exposure to the classic physics experiments in laboratory sessions, there was until recently no provision for students to learn any of the contemporary
skills used in forefront research. Undergraduate students moving on to research environments in academics or industry would miss having the exposure to research skills.
To remedy this situation, a new physics course was envisaged. I was the first course
coordinator for this course and I created and implemented the course curriculum and
plan. The course was taught for the first time in Spring 2008.
3.1
Spring 2008
I designed the course to consist of five sequential segments, exposing the students to
different, but related research skills. The segments were chosen to represent the different
stages of a single research project from start to finish, so that students are also exposed
to the idea of designing and building an experiment, collecting and analysing the data,
doing some computation and modelling, and documenting and publishing the result.
The first segment was a tutorial to LabView, which is a commonly used software to
manipulate and control an external apparatus under computer control. The program has
a convenient graphical user interface that lets the user build a model of the apparatus,
and then send control signals to the apparatus or acquire data from the apparatus, in
a predetermined sequence. LabView is extensively used in academics and industry in
experimental settings. Following the tutorial, students used LabView to acquire data
from various sensors and transducers and perform simple analysis with them.
The second segment was a tutorial to Root, which is a powerful software environment
used to store and analysis large quantities of event data. It is heavily used in experi3
mental nuclear and particle physics. In this tutorial, students were shown a table-top
experimental apparatus in which a radioactive source and a solid-state cryogenic detector were used in conjunction with LabView to record pulse-height spectra from the
source. I used my Duke startup funds to purchase an electronic trigger module in order
to self-trigger the data acquisition system on a signal pulse. Raw pulse-height readings
were recorded in Root format. The students were shown how to write Root macros
in the C++ programming language to read the data, plot histograms, perform an energy calibration of the detector using known energy levels, and perform fits to peaks in
the spectra in order to perform background subtraction and obtain ratios of cross sections. The concept of statistical uncertainty in counting experiments was illustrated by
analysing independent datasets and comparing results and by computing the expected
statistical uncertainty. Students acquired their own datasets and wrote their own Root
macros based on the lectures, examples and documentation, in order to get a sense of
how independent research is performed.
The third segment of the course discussed optical system design techniques. While the
students have learnt about the simple thin lens equation, this is typically not sufficient to
assemble an optical system of the capability needed for research. Research using optics is
a vigorous and growing field with impact ranging from quantum mechanics to biophysics.
To get some exposure to the techniques, students learnt how to design optical systems to
remove spherical aberrations and coma, using the Oslo-Edu software. The students used
optical tables, lasers and multiple lenses to test their design configurations, including
the Cooke triplet configuration.
The fourth segment provided an introduction to computational physics, including a
survey of standard algorithms and methods. Students learnt to write a software program
in the FORTRAN language in order to perform a model calculation using Monte-Carlo
integration. Monte Carlo simulation is a very powerful technique used widely in many
fields of research. Students were also exposed to the UNIX programming environment.
The fifth segment focussed on documentation. Students learnt how to generate a
scientific document, containing an abstract, a succinct description of their result (in
this case the output of their own Monte Carlo simulation), and how to generate and
include figures. The LaTeX documentation program was used for this purpose. Another
important aspect was for the students to learn how to do literature searches, when and
how to cite other relevant publications, and how to construct the bibliography.
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3.2
Spring 2009
I added new components to this course to take advantage of the other cutting-edge
research facilities available at Duke.
The Fitzpatrick Center has a number of advanced microscopes, such as scanning electron microscopes and atomic force microscopes. I created a new segment to instruct
the students on basic theories and concepts of scanning electron microscope and atomic
force microscope, and lithography methods. Students were shown how to create patterns using scanning electron microscope and chemical etching, and how to examine the
samples under SEM. Students were also shown how to use an atomic force microscope.
The Duke Free Electron Laser is also a unique, high-tech facility for research on campus. I created a second new segment based at the DFELL. Students were given a tour of
the DFELL and explained how it works. The students made measurements and analysed
the electron beam profile. Finally, they did measurements and analysis of time-domain
properties of the beam, including fast Fourier transform. The students wrote a short
report on their work with the DFEL.
To make time for these new segments, the segments from Spring 2008 related to optical
system design and computational techniques were omitted.
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Graduate Research Seminar Techniques
In Spring 2008 and 2009 I also conducted the Research Seminar course for 2nd year
graduate students. The goal of this course is to provide the students with some experience and advice on how to give seminars on research topics. Each student gave an
introductory 10-minute seminar and a longer 30-minute seminar to their peers. I provided them with examples of seminar talks. Each student provided anonymous written
feedback on every talk, which I combined with my own impressions of the talk into a
written summary. I then held two meetings with each student individually to review
their short and long talks respectively, in terms of content, presentation and communication style. The first meeting was held immediately after the short talk such that
students would find the feedback useful in preparing and delivering their long talk.
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5
Mentorship
I have supervised a number of students and post-doctoral research associates.
5.1
Post-docs mentored since 2005
• Bodhitha Jayatilaka (Duke University, August 2006 - present)
• Ilija Bizjak (May 2007 - present, member of CDF W boson mass measurement
group from University College, London)
• Oliver Stelzer-Chilton (October 2005 - June 2008, Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow
at University of Oxford, member of CDF W boson mass measurement group)
• Mircea Coca (Duke University, August 2004 - June 2006)
• Christopher P. Hays (Duke University, April 2001 - December 2005)
5.2
Graduate students supervised since 2005
• Yu Zeng (Duke University, June 2007 - present, Ph.D in progress)
• Ravi Shekhar (Duke University, June 2007 - June 2009, M.Sc Thesis) thesis title
“Search for the Higgs Boson in the pp̄ → ZH → l¯lbb̄ Process using Matrix Elements
at CDF”
• Ian E. Vollrath (University of Toronto, Ph.D. 2007) thesis title “Measurement
of the W Boson Mass at the Collider Detector at Fermilab from a Fit to the
Transverse Momentum Spectrum of the Muon”
• Oliver Stelzer-Chilton (University of Toronto, Ph.D. 2006) thesis title “First Measurement of the W Boson Mass with CDF in Run 2”
• Joshua Tuttle (Duke University, M.Sc Thesis, October 2005) thesis title “A Search
for Long-Lived Doubly-Charged Higgs Boson production with pp̄ Collisions at
√
s = 1.96 TeV using Run 2 CDF”
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5.3
Undergraduate students supervised since 2005
• Shreyan Sen (Duke University, June 2008 - present): Shreyan has been working
with me on the W boson mass analysis using the new data from CDF. He has been
tuning the model of the hadronic energy in W boson events.
• Siyuan Sun (Duke University, January 2008 - present): Siyuan has worked with
me on the W boson mass analysis using the new data from CDF. He has worked
on a precise momentum calibration of the particle tracking detector. He is now
analysing cosmic ray data from ATLAS. He spent summer 2008 at Fermilab.
• Edward Daverman (Duke University, Honors Thesis, May 2003 - May 2005): Edward worked on the exotic muon search at CDF and contributed to its publication
in Physical Review Letters.
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