Paul He, assistant professor, teaching stream
Get to know , assistant professor, teaching stream, who joined the 海角视频 of Computer Science this August.
He received his PhD in 2024 from the University of Pennsylvania in the department of computer and information science.
How did you discover your interest in teaching computer science and what do you most enjoy about it?
During my bachelor鈥檚 I had a few smaller teaching jobs, grading and tutoring, and generally liked it. So, during my PhD I figured I would go a bit further and ended up designing and teaching a C++ class, before even TAing a course. And I really liked teaching! I could really see the impact I was having and how students were learning new things. Like many educators I really loved being able to explain or introduce something new to students and see their 鈥渁ha鈥 moment when they got it.
How would you describe your teaching style and approach to teaching introductory computer science courses?
Overall, I鈥檇 say my teaching style is still evolving a lot and I鈥檓 fairly flexible in how I teach. When I taught introductory computer science previously, I really focused on student interaction and had a lot of student polls and in-class activities. I鈥檓 looking forward to seeing what other professors at U of T do and what works well for students here!
Tell us about some of your past research in programming language theory and what attracted you to this area of computer science.
My past research mostly deals with formal verification, where we formally prove properties about programs. My PhD thesis was about using techniques for verifying concurrent code in a different setting, for verifying pointer-manipulating code. I was introduced to this area in my bachelor鈥檚 when I worked on a project for verifying the type system of the Scala language. I didn鈥檛 know anything about programming language theory at the time 鈥 I was just interested in writing proofs 鈥 but I really enjoyed the work and the fact that the theory we were doing had an impact on real software and how programmers do their work.
What drew you to the 海角视频 of Computer Science at the University of Toronto?
The biggest thing by far was the community of other teaching stream faculty in the department. Such a large and experienced group of teaching faculty is really rare, even when considering CS departments worldwide. It鈥檚 great to be a part of this group, as well as a part of a department and university that values teaching so much. The location was also certainly a factor. I grew up in Toronto, and I鈥檓 really happy to be home.
What do you like to do when you鈥檙e not teaching computer science?
In the last few years, I've been doing a lot of rock climbing, both indoors and outdoors. I like to get around Philly by bike, and I鈥檓 looking forward to exploring Toronto on my bike, too. I also really enjoy reading novels, travelling and video games.