Biomedical engineering Ph.D. student Raghav Tandon has lots of experience as a teaching assistant in online courses. Now his work with online students has earned him Georgia Tech’s top award for the student instructors more commonly known as TAs.

“This award feels very special. Being part of teaching efforts lets me share my knowledge with students and learn tremendously from their questions,” Tandon said. “TAing itself has been a rewarding experience for me, and this award provides more encouragement to consider a career in teaching.”

Each year, the Georgia Tech Center for Teaching and Learning honors students who contribute to teaching excellence. Tandon was one of three 2022 Institute-wide Online Teaching Assistants of the Year for his work in BMED 2400, Introduction to Bioengineering Statistics. He is a doctoral student in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering pursuing an interdisciplinary degree in machine learning with Assistant Professor Cassie Mitchell.

“My approach was to try and make learning a joyful experience,” Tandon said. “We tried to show how statistical concepts learned in this course find applications in a wide variety of biomedical engineering applications and beyond. We also focused on maximizing accessibility to our students so that virtual classes could feel as close as possible to the in-person experience.”

Tandon served as a teaching assistant in online computer science courses during his master’s degree studies and was a TA for BMED 2400 in Fall 2020 and Spring and Summer 2021. He credited the instructors, Mitchell and Maysam Nezafati, “who carefully designed the course for the online format and helped the TAs come up with effective plans for helping the enrolled students learn better.”

The Center for Teaching and Learning honored Tandon and the other teaching assistant award winners at a ceremony in late April.