Instructors and TAs

Instructor: Donald Ferguson

Don is an adjunct professor in the Dept. of Computer Science. Don has been an adjunct professor for a total of 15 semesters over many years. Don has taught every spring and fall semester since fall 2014. This is Don's 11th time teaching W4111 - Introduction to Databases. Don also usually teaches a Topics in SW Engineering -- Cloud Computing course in in the fall semester. In addition to being an adjunct professor, Don was a full-time Professor of Practice in Computer Science during 2018.

Don has a long history in the software industry. Don worked for IBM from 1985 to 2007, and became an IBM Fellow in 2001. Don has also been a Microsoft Technical Fellow, Dell Senior Fellow, and CTO for CA technologies. Don was the co-founder and CTO for Seeka TV. Don is currently Chief SW Architect and Ansys Fellow, at Ansys, Inc.

Don got his undergraduate, masters and Ph.D. from Columbia University.

Pelin Cetin (Head TA)

Pelin is a first-year master’s student at Columbia on the Software Systems track. She took this class with Professor Ferguson in Fall 2019 and took the Cloud Computing & Big Data class in Fall 2020. Pelin has previously TA’d Introduction to Python and Data Structures in Java with Professor Bauer.

She completed her undergrad at Columbia this April (Intelligent Systems track). This past summer she worked at Twitter on their Language Infrastructure team.

Pelin is from Istanbul, Turkey. In her spare time, she enjoys watching anime and playing video games. She is excited to be your TA this semester!

Abhishek Adupa (TA)

Abhishek is a second-semester Master's student in Computer Science, Software Systems track. He took Cloud Computing and big data in Spring 2021. This is his first semester working as TA for this course.

Abhishek is from India and has worked as a Senior SWE at Oracle. He has hands-on experience in building modular and reusable components for cloud applications. He's looking forward to helping with this course and is excited to meet everyone in his office hours!

Vaibhav Bagri (TA)

Vaibhav is a masters student at Columbia on the Machine Learning track, in his second semester of the program. He took the Cloud Computing and Big Data class offered by Prof. Sambit Sahu in Spring 2021. He has previously TA’d under Professor Iddo Drori for his Deep Learning course in Summer B. During the summer, Vaibhav also worked as a Data Scientist in the Computer Vision team at Walmart.

Vaibhav is from Mumbai, India, where he also completed his undergrad in Computer Engineering in 2020. In his spare time, he prefers watching TV series and going out with friends. He is looking forward to meeting everyone in his office hours and help them out with their projects!

Xijiao Li (TA)

Xijiao is a first year Master's student in Computer Science (Software System track). She took the class with Professor Ferguson in Fall 2020 and this is her first semester as a TA for this course. Xijiao is from China, and did her undergrad at Columbia too. She has also been a TA for PLT and OS. During the summer, she interned as a software engineer at Google under Cloud Identity.

In her free time, Xijiao enjoys hiking and watching TV series!

Kenya Plenty(TA)

Kenya is a senior at Columbia on the Applications Track. She took Cloud Computing and Big Data in Spring 2021. She is also a member of the school's Women's Fencing Team. For the past two summers, she has interned at Salesforce working on Heroku, their earliest major acquisition.

In her free time, she enjoys doing jigsaw puzzles, lifting, and watching Youtube and Netflix. She is so excited to be your TA this semester!

Pramothini Sekar (TA)

Pramothini is a first-year MSCS student in the Machine Learning track. After having completed her undergrad in Computer Science, she worked as a Software Engineer at Intuit where she built frontend and backend micro services deployed on AWS. This is her first semester as a TA for this course and she is stoked to join us on this journey!

Pramothini is from Chennai, India and in her free time, she loves to dance, read books and binge TV shows.

Wenqian Yan (TA)

Wenqian (she/her) is a first year Master's student majoring in Computer Science on the System Track. She took this class in 2020 Fall and got lots of hands-on experience with AWS, built backend servers and also had great teamwork over zoom during quarantine. This is her first semester working as a TA for this course, and she also has been a TA for Computer Networks and Database.

Wenqian is from Shanghai, China, and finished her bachelor's degree at Columbia this June! She has worked as a SDE intern at TuSimple and a SRE intern at NIO. She’s really excited to work with you this semester and look forward to meeting everyone in her office hours!