Brian Kurkoski - Teaching Portfolio

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Technical English A and B, at the University of Electro-Communications

In Fall 2007, Spring 2008 and Fall 2008, I taught Technical English A and Technical English B. This class is directed at students who are writing journal and conference papers, as well as preparing to make oral presentations.

This web site has samples of material I've developed.

Special Topics on Coding Theory, Fall 2005, at the University of Electro-Communications

In the Fall, I teach a portion of Special Topics on Coding Theory.

This web site has samples of material I've developed.

Mathematics of Information Theory, Spring 2005, at the University of Electro-Communications

Gave a three-lecture sequence on low-density parity check codes, Markov chains and convolutional codes analysis to graduate students. Lecture notes:
  • June 30, 2005. "Introduction to Low Density Parity Check Codes," pdf
  • July 7, 2005. "Low Density Parity Check Codes: Encodings and Density Evolution," pdf
  • July 14, 2005. "Markov Chains and Some Applications to Error-Correcting Codes," pdf

Special Topics in Coding Theory, Fall 2004, at the University of Electro-Communications

In December 2004-January 2005 I taught 3 lectures on turbo codes.

  • December 21, 2004. Gap to Shannon's capacity, overview of turbo codes, analogy with crossword puzzles, pseudo-random interleaver, reliability information. homework.
  • January 11, 2005. Serially-concatenated turbo codes, decoder, repeat-accumulate codes and decoder, soft-input soft-output decoder lecture notes homework
  • January 18, 2005. Weight-enumerating functions, conditional and input redundancy weight enumerating functions, uniform interleaver, weight enumerating function for turbo codes using constituent block codes, turbo code performance analysis. lecture notes homework

Digital Recording Systems, at the University of California San Diego

My responsibilities included preparing 2-3 lectures for the class, including homework and exam problems. In different years, I gave lectures on channel equalization, partial-response channels, turbo codes and Matlab to undergraduates.

I also mentored individual students in a project class the following quarter. Typically, I would meet with the students in a one-on-one weekly meeting, where we would first identify a research topic, discuss papers that I'd directed them to, and then they would reproduce and extend results in those papers.

Teaching Assistant Work University of California San Diego

  • Trellis-coded Modulation. Graduate course, Winter 2001, instructor Prof. Jack K. Wolf.
  • Engineering Probability and Statistics. Lower-division course, Spring 1999, instructor Prof. Ken Zeger. Course web site
  • Engineering Probability and Statistics. Lower-division course, Winter 1999, instructor Prof. Anthony Campora. Course web site
  • Advanced Digital Design Project. Upper-division lab course, Fall 1998, instructor Prof. Bill Lin. Teaching materials: Labs procedures which I wrote