Mentors

We - the Teaching Assistants (TAs), Undergraduate Learning Assistants (ULAs) and Prof. Matni - are what we will collectively refer to as “Mentors”. We look forward to helping you learn and succeed in this class and beyond.

Instructors

Ziad Matni, Ph.D. him/his

I am an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Computer Science department at UC Santa Barbara. I primarily teach undergraduate courses in Computer Science, mentor students, and engage in research in CS education, computational social science, and in data & information science.

I earned my Ph.D. in Information Science at Rutgers University from the School of Communication and Information (SC&I) in 2018. I also have an MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from USC Viterbi. I previously had a career of many years in the tech industry as an engineer and manager.

I am passionate about teaching technology to everyone (i.e. those with and without an affinity for computers, math, or engineering) and see a continued huge demand by people of different work and educational backgrounds wanting to learn computational and data science technologies at all levels. At my core, I am an educator, an engineer, and a social technologist.

My decidedly non-academic hobbies include music performance, international cooking, open-world gaming, and reading (well, does listening to a lot of audiobooks count?)