Teaching

Educational and administrative responsibilities

Since 2014, I have created from scratch, with the help of Monique Margulies (physics) and Franck Monmasson (engineering), a new 2-year program called Apprendre Autrement (~learn differently). Since then, I am head of this curriculum, with Monique Margulies. This program is dedicated to engineering students that have a technological background and lack proficiency in most prerequisites of for the standard classes at university. This program was financed both by UPEC and the ANR through IDEA.

In 2018, I wrote a book relating our experience and received a special mention of the Jacqueline Ferrand prize (SMF) for it. I also wrote an article, published in 2019 in the Gazette des Mathématiciens.

The Apprendre Autrement program has been both a forbearer and a pedagogical experiment in preparation of a much more ambitious project by Christophe Morin, called PULSE, for which UPEC received 10 millions euros for the 2019-2029 period.

Since 2019, I am assisting the dean of the Faculté des Sciences who put me in charge of supervising the organisation of the new mathematics and computer science programs. I have also been contacted by the Inspection générale to act as an external advisor.

In the classroom

As assistant professor at UPEC, I taught about 210 hours per year, from first year classes to master level. I am also compensated for about 70 hours of administrative work. Note that the actual amount of work-hours required is largely in excess of the official records...

I was responsible for many classes. In particular, I supervised the teaching of mathematics to Biology and Earth-sciences students (600 students, 16 teaching assistants) during both the first and second semester. I also teach mathematics and computer science at all levels. For example, I have taught recently classes in differential calculus, topology (L2, L3) and functional analysis (M1) for math-major students. But I also teach algorithmic and programming in Scilab, Python and Java (L1, L2) and distribution theory and tensor calculus (L3) for engineering students

Outreach activities

I am also involved in the popularization of mathematics. From 2012 to 2018, I have participated, with Lingmin Liao, in the Math en Jeans program. We followed 13 middle-school classes (2 to 3 per year), offering recreative problems and regular advice for solving them, and preparing the students to a yearly event where they can present their work to hundreds of other students, from middle and high-schools.

If you like fun problems, here are a few to solve:

• First set of 6 problems

• 7 problems for 2013

• 6 problems for 2014

• A variation on a famous "Die Hard" movie scene

• 5 problems for 2016

• 4 problems for 2017

I also wrote an article with Hajer Bahouri to cover the foundations of signal analysis and the Fourier transform. Our article, Analyse fréquentielle du signal, was published online by Images des Mathématiques; échos de la recherche on Jan. 5, 2019 (here is a printable static version). This article is interactive and pushed me to start a scientific YouTube channel.

Reflexion on pedagogy

To conclude this section of my CV and offer further food for thoughts, I would like to share a video with you, that I have found inspiring. It reflects on how to engage students and teach lively mathematics. It does not provide a miracle recipe for good teaching (I don't think such a recipe exists) but it offers an honest analysis of the darker moments of our classes. I particularly appreciate the idea that mathematics is, to some extend, a creative art form, and that teachers have to find the right balance between presenting not just the techniques of mathematics, but also the beauty of the results and the dynamics of the creative process.

To condense this reflexion in a nutshell, I will transpose William Moris famous quote to Mathematics:

Have nothing in your research or your teachings that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.