Teaching
I teach data science to all disciplines, from social sciences to brain science to computer science.
Graduate sequence
| Course | Focus |
|---|---|
| Methods of Data Collection and Production (EPPS 6302) | APIs, scraping, survey instruments, reproducible pipelines |
| Data Visualization | Grammar of graphics, Quarto and Shiny, public deployment |
| Information Management (EPPS 6354) | Relational design, SQL, AI-assisted workflows |
| Knowledge Mining (EPPS 6323) | Text analytics, language models, applied NLP |
| Advanced Data Programming | Production R, package structure, testing |
| Computational Social Science | Original computational study |
| Survey Research · SEM and Multilevel Models · Advanced Research Methods | Applied measurement and modeling |
I also teach Political Economy of Technology, Politics of China, East Asian Politics.
Program building
- Co-Founder, Social Data Analytics and Research program, 2017 — designed the curriculum, wrote the core courses, and remain the main instructor for all of them
- Director of Graduate Studies, Political Science, 2021–2025
- Director of Academic Computing, 2005–2019
- Organizer, EPPS Math and Coding Camp — the bridge program for students arriving without a quantitative background
- Co-host, Data Analytics Colloquium, 2021–present
Course materials
The graduate sequence is authored in Quarto, which produces a book and the lecture slides from one source, so notes and slides cannot drift apart and the corpus can be regenerated when a package API changes. Materials are published openly and version-controlled.
I have built and delivered R, Quarto and Shiny workshop curricula, and a Quarto + Git + GitHub Pages workshop with slides, templates and an instructor guide so other instructors can run it without me. A full list is on the workshops page.
Mentored research
Students who want to coauthor with me are encouraged to prepare CV, portfolio and proposal materials before scheduling a meeting. Recent conference papers written with graduate students cover generational cleavages in media effects, Bayesian network models of media influence, comparative democratic decline using NLP, the political economy of housing capital in China, structural topic models of American foreign policy opinion, partisan network analysis, and time-series machine learning on US–China trade. Regions of studies include Taiwan, Hong Kong, China and US.
Recognition
- President’s Teaching Excellence Award for Graduate/Professional Instruction — nominee, 2022, 2019
- EPPS Outstanding Teaching Comet Award — mention, 2014, 2013; EPPS Comet Award, 2011
- Best Paper Award, APSA Conference Group on Taiwan Studies, 2023