Teaching & Service

Teaching Experience

Nonlinear Systems (Graduate level, ME C237/EE222), UC Berkeley, 2022

Graduate Student Instructor (Teaching Assistant)
Instructors: Shankar Sastry, Koushil Sreenath

I served as a full-time TA for 53 enrolled students. My responsibilities included 1) leading two 90-minute
discussion sessions biweekly, 2) designing and grading of problem sets and exams, 3) running office hours,
and 4) creation of a lab module for the course’s final project. I introduced this lab module for the first time
in the course’s 40-year history. Students tested various nonlinear controllers they learned in class through
a hardware experiment (report available). My efforts resulted in an average student evaluation score of 4.75/5 (department’s average of 4.19/5). Below are quotes from students’ post-course evaluations.

“I thought Jason was a great TA for this course. He was super knowledgeable, and led fun discussion sections. He answered a lot of questions I had in those sections, was patient with me understanding at my own pace, and helped me to understand a lot of concepts that I think would have slipped through the cracks otherwise. He was also helpful in lab during the final project.”

“Jason was a very effective GSI. It was clear that Jason had a strong foundational understanding in the material as he was able to quickly process questions and know the answer or where to look for it amongst multiple resources. This also made it easier to discuss content beyond what is necessary for the course. Lastly, Jason had a great knack for showing how various concepts introduced during lecture were relevant to real–world problems.”

“Jason, thanks for the support in the lab setting and office hours! It’s clear you care about us doing well as students.”

I designed the lab module so that the students can implement and test various theories and controllers that they learned in the class, including Lyapunov-based methods, Feedback Linearization, Backstepping, and many others.

Tutor – Basic Calculus 1, Basic Physics 2, Mechanics, Fluid Dynamics, SNU, 2014-2018

During my undergraduate studies, I tutored students whose university entrance exam scores and prior GPAs were below average, supporting them in both lower-division and major courses. I led weekly one-hour discussions to review lecture content and work through practice problems.

Guest Lectures

I am honored to have been invited to deliver guest lectures at leading institutions:

Safety Filters for Uncertain Dynamical Systems: Control Theory & Data-driven Approaches

  • UC Berkeley EECS 206B (Robotic Manipulation & Interaction), 2024.
  • UC San Diego MAE 248 (Safety for Autonomous Systems), 2024.
  • CMU 16-886 (Models & Algorithms for Interactive Robotics), 2024.

Control Barrier Functions for Nonlinear System Safety Control

  • UC Berkeley EECS 206B (Robotic Manipulation & Interaction), 2023.
  • USC EE 599 (Learning & Control for Safety-Critical Robotic Systems), 2023.

Optimal Control and Reinforcement Learning for Legged Robots

  • UC Berkeley EECS 206B (Robotic Manipulation & Interaction), 2023.

Introduction to Control Lyapunov Functions and Control Barrier Functions

  • UC San Diego MAE 207 (Safety for Autonomous Systems), 2021.

An example of my guest lectures is available here.

Research Mentorship

Current Graduate Students

  • Maria G. Mendoza, Christopher A. Strong, Gechen Qu

Current Undergraduate Student

  • Andrew Namwook Lee

Past Undergraduate Students

  • Wonsuhk Jung, PhD student at Georgia Tech working with Prof. Shreyas Koushik
  • Kai Yun, MS student at CMU working with Prof. Changliu Liu
  • Alahe Akhavan, undergraduate student at UC Berkeley
  • Elias Morley, undergraduate student at Dartmouth
  • Pranit Mohnot, PhD student at Stanford working with Prof. Marco Pavone
  • Will Lavanakul, Machine Learning Engineer at Snap Inc.
  • Xingpeng Xia, PhD student at UMich
  • Ritvik Mahajan, MS student at KTH

Service Roles & Outreach

  • Research Mentor, Transfer-to-Excellence (TTE) Research Program, Berkeley Engineering, May—Aug 2022
  • Program Committee Member, Special track on Safe and Robust AI, AAAI 2023.
  • Organizer & Mentor, Overseas STEM Institution Exploration Tour, Seoul Science High School, 2019, 2022-2024
  • Local Chair, Organizing Committee, RSS Pioneers Workshop 2025.