师说｜对话数学系系主任Dr. Gaurav Gupta：秉教育之初心，踏研究之阶梯
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在荣获2021-2022年度育人先进奖的名单中，有这样一位来自理工学院的教授：他来自印度，从事数学教学工作已经十余载，更在数据分析和图像处理等领域颇有建树；他热爱台球和远足，也对《摩托浪漫旅》竞速游戏独有情钟；他抛砖引玉，教学从不局限于课本，而是循序渐进，在与学生的讨论中逐步推进他们的思考。他就是数学系系主任Dr. Gaurav Gupta。本期“师说”栏目，我们对话Gupta教授，聚焦他在教学方面的体悟与感受，走进他的科研生涯与教育世界。
教学科研两手抓，他想让科研更具应用价值
Dr.Gupta已有长达十一年的教龄。在来到温肯前，他曾在印度古尔冈诺斯卡普大学、印度大诺伊达大诺伊达理工学院教学，与杰出的教育工作者和学者一起，指导从本科生到博士生的课程学习与学术研究，桃李满园。教学多年以来，Gupta教授不忘科研，这十多年也见证了他在科研上的累累硕果。他不仅手握多项研究成果，在世界知名期刊上发表了30多篇研究论文，还曾在印度空间研究组织（ISRO）、印度国家水文研究所等科研机构工作。值得一提的是，在ISRO工作期间，他曾对于3D城市建模进行了深入学习，通过获取遥远的卫星系统对于地球中各城市的投影，将城市的二维图像巧妙转化为3D立体热感应地图。这段独特又珍贵的经历，也为他未来从事图像分析相关的研究奠定了坚实的基础。
2022年教师节表彰大会，Dr. Gupta荣获育人先进奖
Gupta教授深知，科研与应用相结合的发展会更有前景，好的科研成果尝试做成成果转化，在应用中发现更多有价值的研究课题，能够促进科研创新。他在机器学习和医学影像领域的研发证实了这一理念的有效践行。乐于探索新兴领域的他，将应用数学的知识融入机器的数据分析，意外开拓了机器学习法这个新领域。最近，他正专注于有关医学影像分割的新研究，在将图像分析技术与医学领域中的心脏影像应用结合在一起，加速了手术中的器官影像清晰化进程，手术精准度也因此得以提高。应用过程中，他进一步发现，当图像包含了过多信息时，物体影像分割技术能将无序冗杂的信息进行分割分类处理，从而大大提高了人们的图像分析效率。让科研成果不止步于实验室，让应用数学的知识在不同学科多面开花，也是Gupta教授持之以恒的命题。
解锁多元温肯，他用巧思为学生敲开魅力数学的大门
在2017年，国内的飞速发展以及充满活力的文化驱使着Dr. Gaurav Gupta来到中国，选择加入温肯。温肯在Gupta教授眼中是一个非常国际化的大学，来自全球40个国家和地区的教授在这里授课。学校打破学科间的隔阂，教授之间协商合作，让问题解决落到实处、生根发展。2020年，Gaurav Gupta教授牵头温肯理工学院数学系，举办了数据科学学术-产业联盟大会（AICDS），就得到了校内师生的积极响应，大会共发表了41个研究项目和文章，成为了数据科学爱好者和专家的饕餮盛宴，让更多参与者看到了数据科学的更多可能和其广泛的应用领域。
数学系合影
今年是Dr. Gupta在温肯教学第5年，学生的爱戴以及温肯的开放包容让他对教学始终充满激情。“教书对我来说不仅是一种神奇的经历，还给我带来了无言的快乐。”谈及在温肯的教学体验，Gupta教授总是乐在其中、乐此不疲。他认为：“一个好的教师，正应该具备启发、激励学生进行自主学习的品质”。对于如何提高课堂参与率与学生积极性，他有一套“独家秘籍”——在轻松有趣的教学过程中融入课堂知识，剖析数学在生活中的应用，贯通知识点。再枯燥的数学应用题，也会在他的讲解下“摇身一变”，成了清晰可观的解题步骤。寓教于乐的教学风格也消除了学生们对于数学题的畏难情绪，潜移默化地培养了他们的模型意识和数学解题思维。
为更多学生指明数学具体实践方向，他还做了这些事……
在课堂上，Gupta教授积极引导学生们运用正确高效的解题技巧答题；在课堂外，他积极开设研究项目以激励学生参与到不同课题的探索研究中。他认为：“数学的学习，仅仅拥有理论知识是不够的，学生需要延申课堂知识以应用于具体的实践经验中。”于是，在他的努力下，应用机器学习、统计数据挖掘、数学高级研讨会等研究相关课程相继开设。
Gupta教学在温肯
“温肯儿们都很努力地学习，希望取得更高的成就。他们不只是为了完成课程、取得学位，还希望更多地参与科研。因此我愿意直接与学生一起做研究。”了解到学生的科研兴趣后，Dr. Gupta相继和学生成立机器人学、医学影像等多个领域的研究项目组。在和学生们研究自然语言程序设计时，他注意到机器分析和社会学之间的联系，以此为灵感设立了人工智能与机器学习的研究项目，通过分析谷歌、微信等平台上的文本数据，来追踪保护用户密码等个人信息。在Gupta教授的指导下，今年七月，温肯数学系的2023届卢长杰和2021届的郑深带着心脏影像分割的改进算法，走上了计算机领域影响力排名第一的CVPR国际会议，与来自世界各地的顶级学者们交流切磋，在线上研讨会中收获宝贵经验。
Dr. Gupta与学生在CVPR 2022上共同发表的文章封面
在教学中传承数学文化，在研究中教授实践经验，Gupta教授便是如此，让更多学生浸染数学文化，把握具体实践经验。采访的最后，他寄语所有学生：“数学学习需要一个适应的过程，一旦度过了语言的障碍，适应了学校的教学模式，大家一定会有一个飞速的进步。”愿所有的温肯儿能如同Gupta教授所希望的那样，找到最适合自己的学习节奏，拥抱生活里充满精彩的瞬间，在未来成为出色的学者，以潜力走出属于自己的康庄大道。
Interview with Dr. Gaurav Gupta, Mathematics, College of Science and Technology at Wenzhou-Kean University
Dr. Gaurav Gupta from the College of Science and Technology is from India and has 11 years of teaching experience and rich research experience in data analytics and image processing. He is enthusiastic about billiards, hiking, and motorcycle romantic travel racing games. He is well-versed in a variety of applications and enjoys discussing with students.
Today, we interview Dr. Gaurav Gupta to learn about his teaching insights and his educational worldview.
Dr. Gaurav Gupta has abundant experience both in teaching and research. Before coming to WKU, he has been engaged in teaching at the North Cap University in Gurugram, India, and the Greater Noida Institute of Technology in Greater Noida, India. Along with distinguished educators and scholars, he has trained bachelors, masters and doctors in their curriculum study and academic research. Additionally, he has rich research results and has published more than 30 research papers in world-renowned journals. Not only that, but Dr. Gaurav Gupta has also worked in scientific institutions such as the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), the National Institute of Hydrology, and others. While working in ISRO, he had an intensive study about 3D city models. By accessing the projection of cities from a remote satellite system, he subtly transforms the two-dimensional images of cities into a 3D heat map. This unique and precious experience also laid the foundation for him to engage in the research of image-processing techniques in the future.
Dr. Gupta knows that combing scientific research with industrial application will be more promising to transform scientific research achievement into productivity. More valuable research topics are also likely to be discovered in the application, which is in turn promoting scientific innovation. By integrating the knowledge of applied mathematics into the data analysis of machines, he accidentally opened up a new field of machine learning techniques and published his own academic papers later. Recently, he has been focusing on new research about medical image segmentation, where he has combined image processing techniques with cardiac image applications in the medical field. This technique is able to speed up the process of segmenting images of organs during surgery and thus improve surgical accuracy. Similarly, when the image contains too much information, this image segmentation technique is capable of segmenting and classifying the disordered information, which can greatly improve the efficiency of analyzing the image.
In 2017, the rapid development of China and its vibrant culture drove him to China and to join WKU. In his eyes, WKU is an international university with professors from 40 different countries and regions teaching here. The university breaks down the barriers between disciplines, and the professors can negotiate and cooperate with each other to make problem-solving more "down to earth." In 2020, Dr. Gupta led the Department of Mathematics at WKU to organize the Academia-Industry Consortium for Data Science (AICDS), which received a positive response from faculty and students of WKU. The conference became a feast for data science enthusiasts and experts, with 41 research projects and articles presented, allowing more participants to see more possibilities of data science and its wide range of application areas.
Dr. Gaurav Gupta has been teaching at WKU for 5 years. The love of his students and WKU’s openness and tolerance have always made him passionate about teaching. “Teaching has not only been a magical experience but also has brought me unspoken joy.” So says Dr. Gupta when referring to his teaching experience at WKU. He adheres to a flexible teaching method and insists on “bespoke instruction.” In his perspective, a good teacher should have the qualities of inspiring and motivating students to self-study. In terms of improving class participation and enthusiasm, he has a "trump card"——integrating math knowledge into the breezy teaching process, including analyzing mathematics applications in life and referring to previous knowledge points. No matter how dull the word problems are, he will have them "transformed" into clear and distinct steps as if by magic. His special teaching style of infusing entertainment into learning eliminates students' fear of struggling with difficult math problems. This can cultivate students' awareness of establishing models to solve problems spontaneously and cultivate their mathematical thinking.
In class, Dr. Gupta actively guides students to solve problems with efficient skills. Outside the classroom, he has established lots of research projects to motivate students to engage in the exploration of different topics. According to Gupta, “It is not enough to simply possess theoretical knowledge in the study of mathematics. Students need to extend the knowledge learned in class and apply it to real practice.” Therefore, he set up research-related courses such as Applied Machine Learning, Statistical Data Mining, and Senior Seminar in Mathematics.
In terms of Chinese students, he said: “Many WKU students study hard and want to achieve more and more. They do not just want to complete the course and get a degree. They want to get more into research. I can directly do some research and give it to them.” After learning about students’ research interests, Dr. Gupta established project groups with them in robotics, medical imaging and other related fields. Inspired by the connection between machine analysis and social science he noticed while researching natural language programming with his students. He later set up a research project on real-world AI and machine learning, which focused on analyzing text data on platforms like Google and Wechat to track and protect user passwords and other personal information. Under the guidance of Dr. Gupta, Changjie Lu (Class of 2023) and Shen Zheng (Class of 2021) participated in CVPR to present their project named Unsupervised Domain Adaptation for Cardiac Segmentation: Towards Structure Mutual Information Maximization. In this top-ranked conference in the field of computing, they also exchanged ideas with top scholars from around the world and gained valuable experience from online seminars.
This is what Dr. Gupta does, passing on mathematical culture in the teaching and imparting practical experience in the research so that more students can immerse themselves in mathematical culture and grasp practical experience. In the end, Dr. Gaurav Gupta would like to tell WKU students that mathematics learning requires a process of adaptation. Once they overcome the language barrier and adapt to the mode of learning in school, everyone will make rapid progress. May every WKUer can find the most suitable pace of learning, embrace the wonderful moments in life, become excellent scholars in the future and have an absolutely bright future, as Dr. Gupta hopes.
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