teaching

How do we help students use technical skills in real decisions? That question runs through everything I teach, and it is harder than it sounds. Students can usually solve a clean formulation. They struggle when the objectives conflict, the data is incomplete, and someone has to decide anyway, which is every decision they will actually face at work.

I have taught eight university courses across four universities and more than 300 students, in operations research, supply chain, lean operations, quality, and manufacturing planning. I started as a middle school teacher in Brazil, where I learned that content delivery is the easy part. The harder work is listening, belonging, and meeting students where they are.

In 2026, I received the College of Engineering Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award from Northeastern University, a college-level award.

I teach by listening, and then by changing the course

The most concrete thing I can say about my teaching is that my courses change during the semester because of what students tell me. In OR 6205 I negotiated parts of the syllabus with the class rather than handing it down finished, ran “muddiest point” checks, and kept several feedback channels open, including anonymous ones, because the students most likely to be struggling are the least likely to say so in front of everyone.

Then I act on it. I moved from slides to working problems live on the board, because students told me the slides moved faster than their thinking. I replaced generic examples with cases connected to their own contexts, and added more worked examples when students said the balance had tipped too far toward theory.

“I did like that she was very happy to teach this course cause I could tell that she loves this topic so much, and I like that she was able to listen to our feedback to make the course better.”
OR 6205 student, Spring 2026 (TRACE evaluation)

I also know where I am still improving. In that first semester as instructor of record, students rated intellectual challenge and perceived learning below the departmental mean, and told me why: transitions between topics were too abrupt, the balance tipped toward theory over applied practice, and the assigned textbook hindered more than it helped. That criticism was fair, and it is the reason for the changes above. I would rather run a course that visibly improves under criticism than one that is defended.

Building the materials, not just delivering them

I was the teaching assistant for IE 4516: Quality Assurance, with Prof. Hugh McManus. I also led a complete redesign of the course teaching materials, with Prof. McManus and Dr. Rehab Ali, restructuring them around experimental, simulation-based, and project-based learning. I rebuilt and taught the Design of Experiments and ANOVA module, including a classroom game built for it, and revised and taught the Process Control module.

That experience is what convinced me that course design and teaching are the same job: you cannot run an active classroom on materials built for a passive one.

The materials also got tested. In IE 5617: Lean Concepts and Applications (Summer I 2025) I taught the Process Control and Six Sigma module and the Quality Tools module. In an end-of-term poll ranking all 17 class sessions, those two placed 3rd and 7th, scoring 4.81 and 4.67 on a 5-point scale. Prof. McManus, who has taught the course for years and tracks the ranking each term, noted that the sessions I taught “came out higher than when I do them.”

Teaching students what a model leaves out

My research is about interventions that can make things worse for the people they were meant to help. My teaching asks students the same question.

I use a school busing case: a district closes a middle school and has to reassign every student to the three that remain, minimizing total busing cost. The model is clean and solvable, and it is also wrong. It optimizes cost while ignoring what families actually care about, including community, student well-being, and equity. Every student has been to school and had to get there somehow, so they can feel what the objective function leaves out. When we optimize for cost, we give a voice only to the people who care about cost.

The questions I ask before anyone formulates anything are on their own page.

Students leave my classroom able to build the model. They also leave knowing that a model is a limited representation, that it encodes whose interests count, and that they carry responsibility for how it is used.

The evidence, including the parts that cost me something

Each of these is a page rather than a claim. The files are there to be read, not cited.

• A syllabus my students rewrote · both versions of the same course, and what the change cost me
• My evaluations, including the bad ones · the full TRACE report and my reading of the low items
• Ranked against the instructor’s own sessions · all 17 sessions, and what I wrote to a student contesting a grade
• The busing case · the questions I ask before anyone formulates anything
• The design of experiments game · ANOVA and a factorial design, taught through Doctor Who villains
• Games and smaller pieces · emergency dispatch, family scheduling, microteaching plans
• Exercises and assessment · in both the student and the worked versions
• A course I designed and have not yet taught · Systems Engineering in Public Programs
• Watch me teach · video tutorials built during the remote teaching transition

What I am prepared to teach

Ready to teach immediately. Operations Management · Supply Chain Management · Supply Chain Analytics · Operations Research and Deterministic Optimization · Prescriptive Analytics · Introduction to Data Analysis · Lean Operations and Process Improvement · Quality Management · Engineering Economy and Engineering Economics and Finance · Project Management

Ready with one semester of preparation. Predictive Analytics · Data Visualization · Simulation Modeling · Business Analytics · Decision and Risk Analysis · Sustainable and Responsible Supply Chains · Python for Business Analytics

Ready to develop. Operations Management and Social Impact · Sports and Performance Analytics

Teaching development

INFORMS Committee on Teaching and Learning workshop (2025) → Teaching Fellowship, shadowing Prof. Himlona Palikhe in OR 6205 (Fall 2025) → Post-secondary Teaching Certification (2025–26) → Instructor of record for the same course, OR 6205 (Spring 2026) → College of Engineering Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award (2026) → Future Business Analytics Professors Workshop, Tippie College of Business (August 2026).