Teaching
IST 4: Information and Logic
How do physical circuits compute? This course unveils the "magic" connecting human ideas to modern technology, tracing the historical journey from natural language to the logic of Boole and the algebra-to-circuit mappings of Shannon, and showing how these ideas continue to power innovations in silicon-based and biological computing. More than just a technical class, IST 4 was an inspiring experience for many students due to how Shuki showed the human stories behind the inventions, captured deeper life lessons on humility, curiosity, and natural passion, and modeled genuine interest in students' wellbeing and a whole person view to learning and growth.
Shuki would tell me that "research is like going up a mountain." Hiking up a mountain can be a very arduous task, and we often begin walking in one direction, only to find our path blocked. This leads us to take a slightly different direction—still uphill, but not in the same direction we originally took. Maybe we will eventually end up where we wanted, or maybe we will end up somewhere totally different. But that is the process of research.
TEDx Talk
Shuki introduced the course by showing a slide with several screws, and telling a story about how everyone would be flabbergasted if we left several screws sitting on the table and returned several hours later to see a BMW sitting there. This may seem utterly astonishing, he said, since we have a good sense of what should happen in the physical world. Yet this is precisely what happens in biological systems, and to the modern scientist, what happens in the human body is just as drastic—and just as inexplicable—as the transformation of a pile of screws into a BMW.
Feynman Prize for Excellence in Teaching
Shuki won the 2008-2009 Feynman Prize for Excellence in Teaching, Caltech's most prestigious teaching honor. The prize was established in 1993 "to honor annually a professor who demonstrates, in the broadest sense, unusual ability, creativity, and innovation in undergraduate and graduate classroom or laboratory teaching."