UCLA
Teaching at UCLA
From remote sensing and Perl to model-based systems engineering
- 1993 Earth Remote Sensing
- 1990s Perl & CGI
- MBSE (ENGR 803.03)
- System Architecture (ENGR 203)
Teaching has been an important complement to my career in physics and space systems engineering. My teaching association with UCLA reaches back to the 1990s, when I developed and taught technical courses in Earth remote sensing and Perl programming. More recently, I have taught Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) through UCLA Extension and System Architecture in UCLA’s graduate engineering program. Across these subjects, my aim has been to connect underlying principles with the tools and methods engineers use to solve real problems.
1993
Earth Remote Sensing
In 1993, I co-taught an Earth Remote Sensing course with David L. Glackin of The Aerospace Corporation. The original five-day course was developed for UCLA Extension; an archived agenda documents a three-day Aerospace Corporation offering held November 8–10, 1993. David taught the electro-optical portion, and I taught the microwave remote sensing portion.
The course surveyed the physics, sensors, and engineering of observing Earth from aircraft and spacecraft. The electro-optical sessions covered visible and infrared sensing, imaging and sounding, radiometry, spectrometry, hyperspectral imaging, polarimetry, and lidar. My microwave sessions examined passive sensing, including microwave radiometry, radiometer systems, and synthetic-aperture/interferometric concepts, and active sensing, including radar scattering, altimetry, scatterometry, real-aperture radar, synthetic-aperture radar (SAR), and radar polarimetry. Applications included meteorology, oceanography, Earth resources, and global-change research. We also addressed sensor-system engineering considerations.
Earth Remote Sensing course notes PDF, 681 pages, 20 MB1990s
Introduction to Perl with Applications to CGI Programming
I also taught Perl programming at UCLA Extension during the 1990s. My surviving course materials identify the course as “Introduction to Perl with Applications to CGI Programming.” In that era, Perl was a practical language for text processing, scripting, file manipulation, and building dynamic web applications using the Common Gateway Interface (CGI).
The course began with Perl syntax, variables, operators, control structures, and functions, then progressed to input/output, files and directories, references, subroutines, libraries, regular expressions, packages, and modules. It connected programming fundamentals to practical CGI applications and emphasized writing readable, useful scripts. The original notes preserve a snapshot of web programming during the formative years of the World Wide Web.
Original Perl lecture notes (1997) PDF, 471 pages, 18 MBUCLA Extension
Model-Based Systems Engineering
In more recent years, I have taught Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE), including the UCLA Extension short course ENGR 803.03, in the context of professional systems-engineering education. The course introduces the use of formal models as an engineering work product for describing complex systems, connecting requirements with behavior and architecture, and supporting technical communication and analysis.
Topics include digital engineering concepts, SysML-based modeling, modeling methodology, model organization and traceability, and the practical challenges of adopting MBSE in engineering organizations. A central theme is that an engineering model is more than a collection of diagrams: it is a structured, internally consistent representation of the system that supports reasoning and decisions.
UCLA Master of Science in Engineering Online
System Architecture
I also teach System Architecture (ENGR 203) in UCLA’s Master of Science in Engineering Online program. Although distinct from the UCLA Extension short-course sequence, it complements my MBSE teaching. The course examines how architects translate stakeholder concerns and mission needs into coherent system architectures, using architecture frameworks, systems-engineering standards, and model-based methods. Students explore architecture descriptions, operational concepts, system-of-systems thinking, measures of effectiveness, and architecture evaluation through applied case studies.
A Continuing Theme
These courses span different generations of engineering practice, from remote sensing instruments and early web software to contemporary digital engineering. What connects them is my interest in making complex technical ideas understandable and showing how mathematics, physics, software, and systems thinking can be applied to real engineering challenges.