Instructors' Office Hours
Instructors' Bios
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.
Je Seung You (Head TA)
Je Seung (Jason) is a graduate student majoring in Computer Science. This is his third semester being a TA for the course, as he took the class with Professor Ferguson in Spring 2021.
Currently, Jason is working on a research project with Prof. Lydia Chilton for his MS Thesis research track. Jason has interned as a software engineer and has research experience in Human-Computer Interaction. He is also a Math and Computer Science tutor at Academic Resource Center (ARC). In his free time, he spends his time playing Tennis, training Tae Kwon Do, hiking, and watching Baseball! This course gave him a better understanding of databases, which has been extremely helpful for his work and research. He is looking forward to working together with you all this semester!
Rishav Agarwal (TA)
Rishav is a second year graduate student at Columbia University. He is pursuing Master of Science in Computer Science (Machine Learning Track) and will be graduating this Fall 2022. He took this course under Professor Ferguson in Fall 2021, and it turned out to be one of the best experiences that he has ever had! It built for him the foundation for courses like Advanced Databases and Cloud Computing & Big Data.
Rishav is born and raised in India, and enjoys spending his time in Dance Performances and exploring NYC. He is very excited to be a TA this semester for the first course that he ever took at Columbia, and he hopes that he is able to help out each and every student in this course!
Sakshi Arora (TA)
Sakshi is an international student and is in her second year pursuing masters in Computer Science (Machine Learning Track). This is her first semester TAing.
She completed her undergrad in 2020 from India. She has played badminton and basketball at district level during her undergraduate studies. In her free time she likes to read and watch movies.
Swati Bararia (TA)
Swati is a first year grad student in SEAS majoring in Computer Science with a Machine Learning track. Having taken a version of this course as an undergrad, Swati went on to work as a Software Engineer with Microsoft for 2+ years, where she extensively applied Databases at Enterprise Scale. She also helped a lot of her peers ramp up on the topic. This is her first time being a CA for this course and she is super excited to help learn, and learn from all of you!
Erin Lang (TA)
Erin is a senior in SEAS studying Computer Science on the Software Systems track with a minor in History. She took this course with Professor Ferguson in Fall 2020 and this is her third semester as a TA for this course. According to Erin's totally unbiased opinion, this course is the most practical CS course at Columbia -- talking about this course’s projects in her interviews helped Erin get her summer internships at MongoDB and Disney+.
In her free time, Erin enjoys hiking and drawing things she’ll never finish. She’s really excited to work with you all this semester and see everyone in office hours!
Amber Michaca (TA)
Amber is a senior at Barnard majoring in Computer Science on the Applications track. She took W4111 with Professor Ferguson Spring ’22 and decided to return as a TA because she loved it so much! She found the content of the course to be extremely applicable to her professional experiences. It was especially helpful during her time this summer as a Product Manager at Vivian Health. During her free time, she loves to travel, cook, bake and dance. Amber is really looking forward to working with you all this semester!
Karpagam Murugappan (TA)
Karpagam is a second-year grad student at SEAS majoring in Computer Science - Vision, Graphics, Interaction and Robotics track. She took this course with Professor Ferguson in Spring 2022. She found the course to be constructive and stimulating. She worked at TCS Research for 2 years before pursuing master's. She's looking forward to working with you this semester.
Lily Oforiwaa Sam (TA)
Lily is a senior in Columbia College studying Computer Science on the Applications Track. She’s TAing this course for the first time since taking it in Spring 2022 with Professor Ferguson. She took the class mainly as a fulfillment for the Applications track requirement but it happened that most of the material from the class was super helpful during her SWE internship at Amazon this past summer. Currently on campus, Lily is also tutoring Python and Java under Columbia's Center for Student Advising (CSA) tutoring program for first generation low income students.
Based on her experience taking this class and how instrumental it was for her internship, she’s super excited to be back as a TA and is ready to help out in any way possible!
She found this course extremely helpful and relevant and is very excited to be a TA this semester.
Swetha Shanmugam (TA)
Swetha is a second-year Master's student in Computer Science. She took this course with Prof. Ferguson in Fall 2021 and Advanced Database Systems with Prof. Gravano in Spring 2022. She has 2 years of professional work experience with backend development and interned with Microsoft this summer.
She found this course extremely helpful and relevant and is very excited to be a TA this semester.
Amelia Wissink (TA)
Amelia is a junior in SEAS studying Computer Science on the Applications track. She took 4111 with Professor Ferguson last spring and has TAed for both Intro to Java and Data Structures. In the past, she has interned at Google as a software engineer and worked as a TA for the Girls Who Code Summer Immersion Program. In her free time, Amelia loves to read, cook, and try new restaurants. This course was one of her favorites thus far at Columbia, and she is so excited to work with you all this semester!
Siqi Xie (TA)
Siqi is a grad student in SEAS majoring in Computer Science with a Machine Learning track. She took this course with Professor Ferguson in Spring 2022. This course was extremely helpful and informative. Especially, when she interned as a software engineer at Google last summer, she used a lot of DB knowledge she picked up in this course. This is her first time TAing for this course and she is looking forward to meeting and working with you all this semester!