Department of Systems Design Engineering
Abdul Rahim Ahmad is a graduate student pursuing his Ph.D. in Systems Design Engineering. He is dedicated to his studies and his teaching assignments. A fellow teaching assistant comments that “his devotion to his teaching assignments has raised the level of expectations by our undergrad students from other TAs”. Other TAs consult him to improve their own teaching. Students commented that “he made us think, analyze, and connect every piece of task to our knowledge and intuition of the course material”. Labs previously considered as “menial manual work that improves grades” are now seen as interesting and knowledge-enhancing by the students.
His entrance to the PAMI lab causes a brief moment of disruption as everybody greets him in their own native language and he returns those greetings in the same language – Mandarin, Persian, Hindi, Urdu, Arabic, and French. A colleague says that “he knows that much of each language which is sufficient to start lasting friendships with a positive note”. Another colleague adds that “his enthusiasm, sense of humour, frankness, dedication, and supportive behaviour removed the ‘invisible barrier’ (in his own words) that is always there between students and teachers.”