2019 - Pinaki Chakraborty

The 2019 Student Council would like to recognize and congratulate Professor Pinaki Chakraborty. As the recipient of the 2019 Student’s Choice Teaching Award, Chakraborty taught the celebrated course, Theoretical and Applied Fluid Mechanics.

Chakraborty’s course appealed to physicists and non-physicists alike. Regardless of discipline, students were equally impressed with the preparation and enthusiasm that went into each lesson.

As stated by Simon Peter Mekhail, “his course is well set out and he has a palpable passion for his work.”

The sentiment is readily echoed by Ainash Garifullina, who said “I thought Pinaki was always very well prepared and enthusiastic about his course!”

Even after teaching this course for several years, Chakraborty’s continued commitment to engaging students has been well-noted and earned him this year’s Teaching Award.

As said by many before, certainly many more in the future, and by Ianto Cannon in this instance, “he teaches a brilliant course in fluid mechanics, the contents are well thought out, his enthusiasm when teaching is amazing.”

On teaching

P. Chakraborty, September 2019

In my teaching, I try to seek guidance from two aphorisms. The first, the Occam’s razor, points at an efficient approach:

The second, from Goethe’s Faust, exhorts a teacher to deliberate an existential question: