Teaching

I'm quite passionate about teaching, as I strongly believe that with the right motivation and the perfect supporting material (intuitive and self-explanatory lecture slides, examples, strong motivations, etc.), everybody can achieve what they want, provided enough time is available for studying.

I recall where I didn't invest my time because I thought I'd not be 'good enough', and how I've been "turned" into an "over-achiever" (with sufficient self-esteem) when I was a young student due to some senior academic who put his trust in me and motivated me. (Kudos!)

I just believe that most students who are struggling are mostly doing so because they didn't have the right mentor to give them the self-esteem they need and deserve to trust in their capabilities to achieve as best as they could. I believe that such lacking self-esteem or frustration is one of the core causes for not fulfilling one's full potential. I am convinced that it's the convenor's responsibility to eliminate those issues by perfecting the material as much as possible and encouraging and supporting every single person -- no matter at which level of performance they currently stand.

I constantly try to improve my material to produce easy to understand material that supports learning. I thus always actively ask for any sort of critique to continuously improve myself and the students' teaching experience (otherwise I might think something is great whereas in reality it's perceived quite differently...)

In line of what I mentioned above, I enjoy mentoring the most, even more than doing research on my own, I'd rather supervise more undergraduate, graduate, or PhD students -- to motivate and support them (after all, you even get more research output this way, while interacting with and learning from the next generation). On the surface, I might not seem like an overly friendly person (I am quite direct; I've been told that this is typical for Germans), but that's just the surface! I deeply care for other people, and I always sacrifice all my time to support others if they need it, which translates into my devotion into mentoring and teaching.

At the Australian National University (ANU)

At Ulm University (UUlm)

At the University of Freiburg

Useful Material for students