Welcome CSE New Lecturers

Dr. Sasha Vassar

Bio: 

Dr Sasha Vassar has a cross-disciplinary background in Computer Engineering, Biomedical Engineering and a PhD in Education (UNSW). She has spent a number of years working in the engineering industry improving problem solving and design processes, before her passion for education and teaching brought her back to the university to join CSE as a casual academic. In this role, she has taught a number of subjects, including COMP3511 (Human Computer Interaction), COMP4511 (User Interface Design and Construction) and DESN2000 (Engineering Design and Professional Practice), all courses with a high satisfaction rate from the students. Most recently, she has spent a semester at UNSW Global teaching Programming Fundamentals as part of the diploma course. Her interests include the role of human computer interaction, UX and UI in the design of engineering solutions; the role of design thinking in engineering problem solving and the application of cognitive load theory concepts to improve pedagogy. 

Dr. Jake Renzella

Bio: 

Dr. Jake Renzella is an Education Focussed Lecturer at the School of Computer Science Engineering at UNSW. Jake’s research investigates novel software and artificial intelligence-based systems to support educators, enhance student engagement and improve learning experiences in computing education. Jake's research is embedded in open-source education projects such as SplashKit, and more notably, the Doubtfire Learning Management System, which he co-leads and maintains and is used at several Australian and New Zealand universities.

Dr. Raveen De Silva

Bio:

Dr Raveen De Silva completed a PhD in Mathematics focussed on maximum generalised roundness properties of metric spaces arising from graphs. His undergraduate degree was in computer science and mathematics, also at UNSW. He has lectured COMP4128 Programming Challenges for four terms. He has also worked on a MOOC with the Learning and Teaching Unit and tutored a variety of first year mathematics courses. Raveen represented UNSW twice at the ICPC World Finals, and has since coached three UNSW teams including the Silver Medal winning team of 2018. He also ran CSE's extracurricular program training students in competitive programming for three years.

Dr Johannes Åman Pohjola

Bio: 

Dr Johannes Åman Pohjola completed his PhD at Uppsala University in 2016, then spent 1½ years as a postdoctoral researcher at Chalmers University of Technology. In 2018, Johannes took the shark jump from Sweden to Australia to join Data61 as a research scientist for the Trustworthy Systems group---you may have spotted him at K17 Level 3. He's been a conjoint lecturer at UNSW since 2019, teaching courses such as COMP4161, COMP2111 and currently COMP3151. His expertise is in formal methods, particularly interactive theorem proving, compiler verification and concurrency theory.