Teaching & Mentorship

Teaching and mentorship experience in university physics and physics olympiad coaching.

Overview

I teach and mentor at the intersection of first-principles reasoning and practical iteration. I focus on helping students and mentees build a repeatable process for solving hard problems—and the confidence to do it independently.

What you can expect from my mentoring:

  • Structured problem-solving and first-principles thinking
  • Research workflow: baselines → hypotheses → experiments → ablations
  • Debugging (math + code) and clear communication of results
  • Independence: ownership, good habits, and momentum

University Teaching

Teaching Assistant – Quantum Mechanics I

Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY | Aug 2023 – Dec 2023

  • Supported lectures and problem sessions; helped students develop intuition for core QM concepts
  • Provided office hours and guidance on homework and exam preparation
  • Graded homeworks and provided feedback


Teaching Assistant – Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics

Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY | Aug 2022 – Dec 2022

  • Led office hours; emphasized first-principles derivations and problem setup
  • Helped students connect physical intuition to mathematical formalism
  • Graded homeworks and provided feedback


Teaching Assistant – General Physics

Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY | Aug 2018 – Aug 2020

  • Led lab sessions and recitations for introductory physics
  • Earned 85% positive feedback with 67% student participation in evaluations
  • Served as Head Teaching Assistant in the second year, mentoring and onboarding new TAs
  • Helped students master fundamentals through guided practice and targeted feedback

Undergraduate Mentoring

Peer Mentor – C++ and Programming Abstractions (OOP)

Free University of Tbilisi | Aug 2015 – May 2016

  • Mentored peers in C++ fundamentals and programming abstractions (data structures, recursion, decomposition)
  • Helped translate ideas into clean implementations: interfaces, invariants, and readable structure
  • Solved LeetCode-style problems weekly and reviewed solutions for clarity and correctness

Physics Olympiad Coaching

Physics Team Coach

42nd School of Physics and Mathematics, Tbilisi, Georgia | Sep 2012 – May 2018

  • Coached students for national and international physics competitions
  • Students earned multiple medals in local and international contests
  • Led a team of 11 students to the 2016 International Zhautykov Olympiad (Almaty, Kazakhstan)
    • Team won two silver medals in both physics and mathematics
  • Ran weekly training cycles: timed attempts → solution post-mortems → targeted drills to close skill gaps

Mentoring Philosophy

I mentor the way I like to learn: start from fundamentals, stay curious, and improve through practice and feedback. My goal is to help mentees build a process they can reuse across problems and projects.

I came up through competitive physics (bronze medals at IPhO 2012 and IZhO 2012), which shaped my approach: clean reasoning, strong intuition, and deliberate practice. Now, in ML research engineering, I emphasize:

  • Start with a simple baseline and a clear goal
  • Change one thing at a time; write down what you learned
  • Debug methodically (math, code, evaluation)
  • Communicate results clearly

Ultimately, I want mentees to leave more independent—and more confident in their ability to figure things out.