Lab Prof, Teaching Assistant

Measurement and Instrumentation Class

 
 

Measurement and Instrumentation - the ‘Go Forth and Measure’ Project

Measurement and Instrumentation, is a mandatory undergraduate class in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The class centers around the semester-long ‘Go forth and measure’ project, where each student conceptualizes a research idea and transforms that idea into a research project (‘On a Mission to Measure’). Then, they spend the semester designing the experiment, collecting and analyzing the data, and then presenting the results in a formal research paper and poster presentation.

I worked with the class from Fall 2020 to December 2023, holding two roles - that of a graduate student TA and Lab Instructor/Lab Prof.

  • The primary role of the Lab Prof is to supervise and advise the Go Forth Projects. I advised a total of 38 student projects. Responsibilities included:

    • Review project proposals and major project project deliverables.

    • Hold ongoing meetings with students at major project milestones to provide guidance on data analysis and interpretation and on how to use the results to decide on the next steps and meet deliverable deadlines.

    • Oversee, instruct, and troubleshoot core lab exercises on data collection, analysis, and domain-specific measurement techniques.

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  • The Graduate TA responsibilities include:

    • Before the project proposal, meet with students to mentor them through turning their proposed idea into a well-defined and feasible experiment objective.

    • Review experiment setup diagrams and material requests, assessing the safety, cost, manufacturability, scope, and ability to achieve research objectives. Follow up with meetings to assemble setup, troubleshoot and collect first working dataset.

    • Instruct students on how to setup/calibrate/operate the sensors needed for their experiment

    • Provide ongoing assistance to students with troubleshooting sensors and data analysis in MATLAB.

    • Examine malfunctioning sensors, decide on the next steps - repair, rebuild, or replace.

    • Rebuilt and upgraded all force resistive sensors in the lab to use system power and autoID, streamlining user setup and reducing downtime. More on these sensors here