Miguel Torres Wins Killam Graduate Teaching Assistant Award

Miguel Guillen Torres’ balance of approachability and professionalism as a teaching assistant has garnered him the 2011/2012 Killam Graduate Teaching Assistant Award. The Award is given out annually to a small group of TAs who have made an outstanding contribution to teaching and learning at UBC. The successful award winners have demonstrated skills, abilities and contributions that result in a high level of respect from undergraduate students and faculty members.

As a ECE PhD student studying motion sensors, Miguel has been a TA for several fabrication and electronic undergraduate ECE courses. He is concerned with being well prepared so both he and his students have a solid background on the labs they run. “I always make sure that I am aware of the things I am going to do. Whenever I TA something, I [conduct the] experiment myself before so that I can run into all the troubles the students are going to run into.” Miguel believes not just to solve problems on paper, but to understand the underlying engineering concepts so they are able to think outside the box. “I always encourage students to do that and I try to do that myself.”

Under the supervision of Dr. Edmond Cretu, Dr. Lukas Chrostowski and Dr. Nicolas Jaeger, Miguel is continuing his research on motion sensors using varied intensity of light to register minute movements, and has recently made a breakthrough in his gyroscopic experiments.

More about Miguel’s research:
Ring Resonator Optical Gyroscopes—Parameter Optimization and Robustness Analysis.