Teaching

Over the past two and a half decades, I have had the good fortune to be able to teach a variety of courses at Stanford, UIUC, MIT, Cambridge, and Harvard  – an excuse to learn new subjects, often just a little before teaching them!

Undergraduate and graduate courses that I have taught in mathematics, science and engineering include Multivariable Calculus, Complex and Fourier Analysis, Numerical Analysis, Mathematical Modeling, Asymptotic and Perturbation Methods, Partial Differential Equations, Classical Dynamics, Elasticity, Hydrodynamics, Pattern Formation, Systems Biology, Acoustic Ecology, and Biological and Artificial Intelligence.

I also introduced a number of courses to the curricula, including a new undergraduate course on Numbers, Policies and Society (2018) at Harvard, a graduate course on Molecular and Cellular Biophysics at MIT (1997), at Cambridge (2001) and at Harvard (2004),  and graduate courses on Inverse Problems in Science and Engineering  (2016) ,  Pattern Formation in Soft Matter (2017) and Active Matter (2023) at Harvard.

At Harvard, I have created Freshman Seminars on the Science of Everyday Life (2007), Sustainable Energy and Climate Change (2008), Sensory Physiology (2009), and Pleasures of Probability (2011).

Away from my academic homes, I have been a regular summer and winter school lecturer. At the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley CA,  I was the director (with A. Hosoi) of their first Summer Program on Applied Mathematics (1999). At the Marine Biology Laboratory in Woods Hole MA,  I was the Founding Co-director (with T. Poggio and G. Kreiman) of their newest established Summer School on Brains, Minds and Machines (2013). And most recently, at the HHMI Janelia Research Campus in Ashburn VA, I was the Founding Co-director (with A. Hermundstad, V. Jayaraman, E. Kanso,) of a new Summer School  – on the Mathematical Analysis of Behavior (2018).

Additionally, I have taught in the London Mathematical Society Summer School (UK), at the Les HouchesCargese and Peyresq summer/winter schools in Physics (France) , the Valparaiso School on Instabilities and Nonequilibrium Systems (Chile),  the Geilo Winter School on Physics (Norway), the Boulder school on condensed matter physics (USA), and the IAS-Park City summer school (USA), where I was the Clay Senior Lecturer in 2014.

Since 2004, I have been a regular visitor at the Physiology Summer School at the Marine Biological Labs and the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Program at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, MA and continue to go there every summer.