PhD student Jeffrey Niu receives UBC Killam Graduate Teaching Assistant Award
UBC Computer Science student Jeffrey Niu recognized for teaching excellence
UBC Computer Science PhD student Jeffrey Niu has been awarded the 2025/2026 UBC Killam Graduate Teaching Assistant Award. This award honours the top graduate teaching assistants (TAs) who demonstrate remarkable teaching and is highly regarded by supervisors and undergraduate students. Jeffrey is one of 19 graduate students across the university awarded this year.
“The award isn’t just about me,” he says. “It’s also about all the faculty and peers who have supported me and given me the opportunity to teach. I’ve been fortunate to work with a wonderful team of professors and TAs at UBC.”
Jeffrey first became involved in teaching and learning when he was an undergraduate student in computer science at the University of Toronto, starting with course development and later becoming a TA. Since joining UBC as a Master’s student in 2022, he has been a TA for introductory computer science courses, including Introduction to Systematic Program Design (CPSC 103) and Models of Computation (CPSC 121). After six terms of helping students in CPSC 103, he taught the course as a sessional lecturer in 2025.
“Seeing students learn and helping them through their educational journey is really rewarding,” he says. “The transition from high school to university can be tough, so I try to help them stay on track, develop good study habits and understand the underlying concepts of the material.”
Choosing recipients of the Killam Graduate Teaching Assistant Award is a highly selective process. TAs must show broad knowledge of the field, help students effectively learn course materials and skills, incorporate new teaching skills through professional development, and develop rapport with students, faculty supervisors and colleagues. Awardees must also demonstrate reliability and availability as a TA, acting as a role model to students.
In addition to being a TA, Jeffrey worked with Instructor Jordon Johnson to develop materials for the TA training program, which teaches TAs to more effectively help students to learn the material. He has also been involved in course development with Instructor Jessica Wong, helping to integrate the learning platform PrairieLearn and an autograding system into the CPSC 103 course.
Under the supervision of Assistant Professor Jiarui Ding, Jeffrey studies computational tools for genomic data for his PhD. Jeffrey recently led a paper published in Cell Reports Method on a machine learning model that integrates and generates multiomics data, helping scientists further study fundamental biological processes and diseases. He is supported by UBC’s Four Year Doctoral Fellowship program, the Killam Doctoral Scholarship and the NSERC PGS-D award.