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.

Carrie Hay Kellar (Head TA)

Carrie is a first year Master's student in Computer Science Machine Learning. She has been a TA for 4111 for the past four semesters as she took the class with Professor Ferguson in Fall 2019. Carrie is from Toronto and has spent her summers working as a Machine Learning Intern at the NYTimes and in Sales & Trading. She has used what she has learned from this course in every internship and is looking forward to working with you all this semester!

Matthew Román (TA)

Matthew is an undergraduate senior studying Computer Science (Intelligent Systems) and Physics. He was a TA for 4111 with Professor Ferguson in Spring 2021 and took the class with Professor Ferguson in Spring 2020. In his spare time, he likes watching anime. During quarantine he got big into tattoos. He just finished an internship as a software engineer at Google under Cloud AI and plans to start there full-time after graduating!

Sophie Reese-Wirpsa (TA)

Sophie (she/her) is a senior in SEAS majoring in Computer Science on the Applications Track with a minor in Applied Math and Sociology. This is her second semester as a TA for databases. She also has been a TA for Java, Data Structures, and Java Lab.

Sophie is from Chicago, Il. She has interned as a software engineer and enjoys competing in hack-a-thons and design challenges. She is a Co-President of Columbia University’s Engineers Without Borders chapter.

Je Seung You (TA)

Je Seung is a senior in GS majoring in Computer Science and Mathematics. This is his first time being a TA for the course, as he took the class with Professor Ferguson in Spring 2021.

Je Seung has interned as a software engineer and has research experiences in UX/UI Design and Deep Learning. He is also a math tutor at Academic Resource Center (ARC) and a President of Columbia Tae Kwon Do. 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.

Azhaan Zahabee (TA)

Azhaan is a third semester student pursuing M.S. in Computer Science on the Software Systems track. He took COMS 4111 last semester and will be the TA for the course this semester. Azhaan is from India and did his undergrad from IIT (ISM), Dhanbad in Computer Science and Engineering. This summer he interned at Amazon in the AWS Aurora MySQL team. This class gave him a lot of useful knowledge of Databases that helped him in his internship hunt. After completing his masters, he will be returning full time at Amazon. He is excited to meet you all in person and work with you this semester.

Erin Liang (TA)

Erin is a junior in SEAS studying Computer Science on the Applications track with a minor in Applied Math. She took this course with Professor Ferguson in Fall 2020 and this is her first semester as a TA for this course. Talking about this course’s projects in her interviews helped Erin get her summer internship as a data engineer at Disney Streaming Services (Hulu/Disney+/ESPN+), where she worked on Disney’s marketing data pipelines from her Wisconsin home. 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!

Shao-Chi Wu (TA)

Shao-Chi is a third-semester student pursuing his M.S. degree in Computer Science on the Software Systems track. He took W4111 - Introduction to Databases with Professor Ferguson in fall 2020. This is his first time as a TA for W4111. He loves playing with data. Joining Verizon Media (Yahoo) Audience Insights team as a software engineer intern led him to the big data world where capacity of databases is counted as petabytes. The internship experience connects real-world use cases to databases knowledge that he learned at Columbia. After a year of online learning, he is excited to join this class and work with you this semester!

Hongfei Chen (TA)

Hongfei is a senior combined plan student in SEAS majoring in Computer Science on the Foundations track. This is her second time being a TA for the course, as she was a TA for last semester. She took the class with Professor Ferguson in fall 2020.

Hongfei has research experiences in IoT, robotics and networks in labs at Columbia and other universities. In the past, Hongfei has interned as a software engineer. She is currently working as a research intern at the Earth Institute, applying some database knowledge she has learned from the course.

Sam Figueredo (TA)

Sam (she/her) is really excited to be one of the TAs for this semester. She is an Information Science major on the Health Science track with a concentration in Public Health. She took COMS W4111 with Professor Ferguson last semester and really enjoyed her time. While this class is challenging, she learned a lot from this course which has certainly been a rewarding experience. She hope to see you guys around during office hours and feel free to reach out to her if you have any questions!

Samuel Oh (TA)

Samuel is a GS senior majoring in Computer Science on the Software Systems track. He has TA'ed for several CS classes in the past, but this is his first time being a TA for this course. He really enjoyed taking COMS 4111 with Professor Ferguson in Fall 2020. He spent this summer working as a Software Engineering Intern at Samsung Electronics where he extensively used the DB knowledge he picked up in the course. He is looking forward to meet you all and work with you all throughout this semester!