Meet the Faculty

Rajeev Sahay

Rajeev Sahay is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UC San Diego. He received his Ph.D. and M.S. in 2022 and 2021, respectively, from Purdue Univerity in electrical and computer engineering, and he received his B.S. in 2018 from the University of Utah in electrical engineering. Prior to joining UC San Diego, Rajeev was a Senior Machine Learning Software Engineer at Saab, Inc, where he supported a variety of research programs in machine learning, automatic target recognition, uncertainty quantification, and deep ensemble learning. Currently, his research interests include networking and machine learning, particularly in their applications to engineering education and wireless communications. 

Gerald Soosairaj

Gerald Soosairaj is an Assistant Teaching Professor in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). He received his PhD in Computer Sciences and Education from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2019. He specializes in computing education research (CER) primarily focusing on making computing education accessible and inclusive to a diverse set of learners. He has co-authored two free online interactive textbooks for introductory programming in Python and Java. He cares deeply about improving equity, diversity, and inclusion in computing. He has taught computer science to a wide range of people including 3 year old children, 4th and 5th graders, undergraduate and graduate students, and working professionals. He is an adventure enthusiast and has done activities like skydiving, bungee jumping, and scuba diving.

 

Shirley Miranda - Teacher Fellow

Shirley earned her B.S. in Computer Engineering at UCSD and worked as a software development engineer creating front-end and back-end business software for government and private industry. Her continued volunteer work with high school students through the Greater San Diego Science and Engineering Fair (GSDSEF) inspired her to go into teaching. At the University of San Diego, she earned her M.Ed. focusing on technology in education. She has taught Statistics 1-2, AP Statistics, Robotics and AP Computer Science A at Morse High School and currently has a computer science and engineering lab at Morse High where students throughout the district visit for CS and Engineering experiences.  She also visits elementary schools to provide CSE experiences for UTK-5 students.  She has been a Teacher Fellow at UCSD COSMOS since 2007. She has served as the Director of the GSDSEF (1999-2016), a member of the COSMOS Advisory Board and on the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair’s Advisory Council. She has been recognized with the 2014 National Council of Women and Information Technology (NCWIT) Educator Award for her contributions to the computer science educational community. Additionally, she is the 2016 San Diego County Teacher of the Year. She currently is working at the San Diego Unified School District’s Career and Technical Education (CCTE) Department to create computer science and engineering education and experiences for universal transitional kindergarten through twelfth grade students. In 2018, she was appointed by the California State Superintendent of Instruction to the Computer Science Implementation Plan Panel submitted a plan to roll out K-12 computer science education in California. Shirley spends her free time writing and visiting the San Diego Zoo with her husband and young daughter (who loves to code) and learning taekwondo (both her husband and daughter are black belts, while she has just started the journey). She has published four books Falling, Winter Solstice, Wintering, and Springing of her Bits and Pieces series (found on Amazon.com). She is currently writing her fifth book of the series. She has been a COSMOS Teacher Fellow since 2007 for Cluster 1 and was excited to launch Cluster 12.