Educational Leadership

Fourteen modules.
Five institutions. Three countries.

From data structures in Hong Kong to knowledge graphs at Southampton — taught across every level, in every kind of room, for eighteen years.

0 Modules Taught or Led
Top 1% Module Ranking, School-Wide
0 Applications — I Was Top 3
0 Modules I Led Outright
Where

One brick per module.

Pink bricks are modules I led or convened outright — owning the syllabus, the assessment and the outcome.

Southampton 3 modules · 2024–
Essex 3 modules · 2020–22
Kent 4 modules · 2017–19
CUHK 3 modules · Hong Kong
SMIT 1 workshop · India
Recognition

Judged by panels, not by self-report.

🏆

Vice-Chancellor’s Award finalist, 2024

One of three finalists out of 630 applications university-wide in the Teaching category at Southampton — recognising the teaching work and Competitive Coding, the competitive-programming society I founded.

🎓

Fellow of the HEA

Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education awarded, with Distinction in two of four modules — the formal UK teaching qualification, not just experience on the job.

🌎

The only academic chosen from the UK/EU

Peking University’s Intelligent Computing and Sensing Laboratory invited nominations across UK and EU institutions for its 2019 summer school. Kent submitted me alongside its senior professors. I was the only academic selected from the entire UK/EU region — and the most junior name on the list.

📈

Top 1% of modules, school-wide

Knowledge Graphs for AI Systems has consistently ranked in the top 1% of all modules across the school — a ranking driven by student support, not by grading generosity.

The Full Record

Every module, every level.

University of Southampton

2022 – present
Module Lead COMP3222 / COMP6246

Machine Learning Technologies

Undergraduate and MSc. Built additional pre-recorded lectures and a per-topic Q&A document to help students prepare for exams. Consistently strong feedback.

Module Lead COM6256

Knowledge Graphs for AI Systems

Ranked in the top 1% of modules school-wide. The syllabus feeds directly from my Turing/MoD knowledge-graph research.

Teaching Support GENG0015

Engineering Foundations

Foundation-year engineering, for students entering without a standard maths background.

University of Essex

2020 – 2022
Module Lead CE807

Text Analytics

Excellent student feedback and teaching score. Student comments and scores →

Second Module Lead CE306 / CE706

Information Retrieval

Undergraduate and MSc, in the subject of my own doctoral research.

Lab Supervisor CE299

Project Module

Supervising individual student capstone projects — one of which became a published paper.

University of Kent

2017 – 2019 · Medway
Module Convener CO334

People and Computing

Human-computer interaction. The module that generated most of the student feedback below.

Module Convener CO547

Agile Software Development & Security

Industrial software practice and secure development for final-year undergraduates.

Lecturer CO639

Electronic Commerce

My first-ever lecture at Kent — which prompted an unsolicited student email to another tutor (quoted below).

Lecturer CO644

Semantic Web

Knowledge representation and linked data — the direct precursor to the knowledge-graph module I now lead.

The Chinese University of Hong Kong

During the PhD
Teaching Assistant CSC2100E/F

Data Structures

Lectured on computational complexity, pseudocode, searching and sorting. Wrote assignment questions from real-world problems and ran full-syllabus revision classes.

Teaching Assistant SEEM 3490

Information Systems Management

Delivered the information security and cryptography lectures, plus revision classes and project supervision.

Teaching Assistant ENGG1100

Introduction to Engineering

Supervised students building a self-navigating robotic car, and taught 3D printing and SolidWorks.

Sikkim Manipal Institute of Technology

India · as an undergraduate
Workshop Organiser Peer-led

Functions & Pointers in C

Ran student workshops on the two topics that defeat most first-year C programmers — while still an undergraduate myself. Where it started →

Student Voice

Unsolicited, and not always flattering.

These arrived by email, unprompted, from students who had nothing to gain. The critical ones are here too — the point of feedback is that you act on it.

Two students told me the same thing in different words: discuss first, then show the slides. That one piece of student feedback reshaped how I teach every module since.
Beyond the Timetable

The teaching work that isn’t on a timetable.

🧩

Founded a student society from zero

Competitive Coding — trained students for ICPC, UKIEPC and NWERC, secured dedicated funding from the Head of School, and led teams to international contests. I also sit on competition juries and set problems.

🤝

Covering when colleagues couldn’t

Took over Java tutorials when a staff member resigned mid-term; lectures for a colleague on paternity leave; a final-year project group during a sabbatical; and the entire undergraduate admissions portfolio at short notice. Unglamorous, and exactly the job.

📚

Doctoral supervision at scale

17 doctoral researchers supervised, plus four embedded research engineers — including a Doctoral College Director’s Award winner and a Microsoft Research PhD Fellow.

🎓

Curriculum design beyond my own institution

Invited member of the Board of Studies for Computer Science at Adani University, India, shaping a national CS curriculum — and external examiner on PhD theses in the UK and India.