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Instructors (Fall 2020)

This year our First Year Experience and Transfer Year Experience courses will be taught by seven instructors from several different departments, including: Psychology, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Communication, Computer Science, Theatre and Dance and College Writing. Our instructors are committed to student learning, engagement, and sucess. Get to know them below.

We also work with a team of six graduate teaching assistants. Meet them here.

First Year Experience Instructors

  • Brian Leigh

    Brian Leigh

    Revelle College | REV 1

    Dr. Leigh received his Ph. D. in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 2009. He subsequently worked as a contractor on problems for the United States Intelligence Community. In 2011 he became an Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California San Diego where he performed research on standoff detection of non‐nitro based explosives. In 2015 He joined the Forensic Exploitation Directorate and performed applied forensic science in Afghanistan. Dr. Leigh will bring his experience in working in the field of national security to UCSD by augmenting courses and labs to reflect the cutting‐edge analytical forensics that are currently used.

    Contact: bleigh@ucsd.edu

    Office Location: Urey Hall 2230

    Instructor Website: https://www-chem.ucsd.edu/faculty/profiles/leigh_brian.html

    College Website: https://revelle.ucsd.edu/
  • Niema Moshiri

    Niema Moshiri

    Seventh College | SEV 1

    My name is (Alexander) Niema Moshiri, and I am an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Computer Science & Engineering Department at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). I work on computational biology, with a research focus on HIV phylogenetics and epidemiology. I also place a heavy emphasis on teaching, namely on the development of online educational content, primarily Massive Adaptive Interactive Texts (MAITs), and I recently gave a TEDx talk on the subject (below). You can watch my Ph.D. defense here, and you can read my Ph.D. dissertation here.

    In addition to my appointment in the Computer Science & Engineering Department at UCSD, I have the following affiliations:

     

     
  • Phoebe Bronstein

    Phoebe Bronstein

    Sixth College | SXTH 1

    My first book project, Televising the South, examines how the South functioned as a powerful force in television production between 1950 and 1980, while examining how shifting representations of the region expose troubling national narratives about race and gender. I love television and watch everything from Pretty Little Liars to Downton Abbey, Devious Maids, and Black-ish. In my teaching I focus mostly on television history but I also teach the occasional film or novel. I’ve taught classes on topics ranging from domesticity and television history to media aesthetics, teenagers in pop culture, music videos, and television and geography.

    Contact: pbronstein@ucsd.edu

    Office Location: TBA

    Instructor Website: https://sixth.ucsd.edu/cat/people/staff/phoebe-bronstein.html

    College Website: https://sixth.ucsd.edu/
  • Mark Guirguis

    Mark Guirguis

    Thurgood Marshall College | TMC 1

    MARK GUIRGUIS has designed sets for many professional companies including Theatreworks, CA., Oasis Theatre Company, and Playhouse on the Square in Memphis, Tennessee; credits there include Side Man, Dinner with Friends, It Ain’t Nothing But the Blues and “Jekyll and Hyde…” for which he received an Ostrander award. As a lecturer and designer at Stanford University, Department of Drama his many credits include Equus,Cloud Tectonics, Entertaining Mr. Sloane and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  Mark has also worked as guest artist for other theatre departments including those of California State University, Los Angeles and North Carolina Central University.  He is currently involved with a new work about the life of artist Mine’ Okubo.

    Contact: mguirguis@ucsd.edu

    Office Location: Department of Theatre & Dance

    Instructor Website: http://www-theatre.ucsd.edu/people/faculty/design/MarkGuirguis/index.htm

    College Website: https://marshall.ucsd.edu/

Transfer Year Experience Instructors

  • Paul Yu

    Paul Yu

    Revelle College | REV 2

    I would like to welcome all new and continuing students to Revelle College. I am pleased to serve as Provost of Revelle and to be a part of Revelle’s vibrant and inquisitive community.

    At Revelle, our mission is to cultivate versatile and well-rounded scholars who possess a profound knowledge of multiple fields. We believe that success and failure are determined by whether we choose to challenge ourselves. At Revelle, challenges are opportunities to learn, to realize our dreams and to become the best possible version of ourselves.

    While it is a student’s job in college to learn about the wonders of the world around them, it is my job to learn about you. So, please introduce yourself to me whenever you see me on campus. It will be my pleasure to meet you!

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    Paul Yu joined the UC San Diego faculty in 1983. He is the Provost of Revelle College and a Distinguished Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. He is the former Associate Vice Chancellor for Research Initiatives in the Office of Research Affairs and a former Interim Dean at the Graduate Division. His research emphasizes novel electronic and opto-electronic devices such as optical modulators and photodiodes, and advanced semiconductor materials. He served as the President of IEEE Electron Devices Society in 2012-13. He is a Fellow of IEEE, AAAS, OSA and SPIE. He published more than 160 papers in the area of photonics/electronics. He received a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Caltech in 1983.

    Contact: reprovost@ucsd.edu

    Instructor Website: https://revelle.ucsd.edu/about/provost-welcome.html

    College Website: https://revelle.ucsd.edu/
  • Leslie Carver

    Leslie Carver

    Thurgood Marshall College | TMC 2

    Dr. Leslie Carver is the Provost for Thurgood Marshall College. She is passionate about TMC's mission of promoting cultural responsiveness, social equality, and civic justice. She is also a professor in the UCSD Psychology Department and Human Development Program, as well as the DN Lab’s director. Dr. Carver’s dissertation work on infant memory was one of the first studies to directly link brain and behavior in early infancy. Her current research includes projects on infant memory, social referencing, and face processing and social development in children with autism.

    Contact: ljcarver@ucsd.edu

    Office Location: Provost Office, Thurgood Marshall College

    Instructor Website: https://psychology.ucsd.edu/people/profiles/lcarver.html

    College Website: https://thecolleges.ucsd.edu/fye/instructors/index.html
  • Stefan Tanaka

    Stefan Tanaka

    Earl Warren College | WARR 2

    Stefan Tanaka is a historian who has worked on modern Japan. His earlier work focused on the ways that history, pasts, and time were configured to define Japan's world and itself. Recently that inquiry has shifted to history as a technology of communication. This shift to history as media opens an inquiry into different ways that historical knowledge, categories, and practices are both tied to particular literary systems and might change in the digital age. This interest has led to work in scholarly communication and the Digital Humanities. He is currently completing a book manuscript entitled, History without Chronology.

    Contact: stanaka@ucsd.edu

    Office Location: Communication Building, Room 244

    Instructor Website: http://communication.ucsd.edu/people/faculty/stefan-tanaka.html

    College Website: https://thecolleges.ucsd.edu/fye/instructors/index.html