Dr Jie Yang is currently an Assistant Professor in Applied Mathematics/Statistics and the Course Director of Statistics for the School of Mathematical Sciences at UNNC. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, which advocates evidence-based teaching methods and is responsible for the UK Professional Standards Framework.

Jie received her PhD in Systems Biology from the University of Manchester, UK, and a BSc (Hons) in Mathematics from Imperial College London, UK. Her principal research interests involve mathematical biology applications such as environmental health impact assessment.

Since joining UNNC in February 2017, she has delivered lectures and seminars to around 700 students. Jie’s teaching philosophy is to enhance the students’ fundamental understanding and problem solving skills that will enable them to think analytically and logically throughout their future careers.

In this era of rapidly evolving technology, teaching mathematical related modules requires a dynamic interconnection between theoretical and analytical principles, real-life examples and the use of computational software to demonstrate how to solve problems. Jie thinks that Mathematics and Engineering students should receive positive stimulation for them to develop the capacity to iteratively and flexibly process knowledge between different taught subjects in an interdisciplinary manner.

Jie believes that mathematics is ideally learnt by practicing many examples because the best way to learn mathematics is simply to do mathematics. When she teaches, the core concepts of the module are gradually introduced once the foundations of the topic have been built into the minds of the students. A sound understanding of theoretical foundations is necessary initially before the student’s ability to solve problems effectively can be cultivated. Jie enjoys interacting and communicating with her students in a way that allows her to re-adjust her teaching strategy to the suitable level of difficulty required.

To improve student engagement, Jie likes to employ interactive experiments whenever possible to demonstrate mathematical concepts. Computational demonstrations that show the students how to produce graphical solutions from equations are used throughout the module delivery to enable them to see how a theoretical problem is solved in real-life. Short videos are also often employed to help illustrate mathematical theory taught to the students.

As a result of her efforts, Jie has received consistently positive feedback. For example, one of her students commented on her teaching: “I really enjoyed studying in Jie Yang's class this year. She is very informative and her classes are always enjoyable. She is also very helpful when I have any questions. Overall, one of the best maths teachers I've had in a while!”

In addition to the curriculum teaching, Dr Jie Yang volunteered to supervise students for the Mathematical Contest in Modeling (MCM). This is the second academic year UNNC has participated in MCM. Jie, together with the SESA Director for Applied Mathematics, have organised training sessions, seminars and workshops related to mathematical modelling. The high student attendance of over 100 students each time from several disciplines across UNNC was a testament to how successful all of these events were.

During the on-going COVID-19 pandemic, the MCM student teams had to communicate everything and put together a 24 page scientific report within 5 days using only online means. Jie is very proud of all her MCM students for the hard work and teamwork skills they demonstrated during this difficult time. One of the teams Jie was supervising was awarded an "Honorable Mention" this year. It is hoped that students will go on to achieve further success in future iterations of MCM.