TA Spotlight: Raymond Jia

Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Raymond Jia is a TA for CS 6601: Artificial Intelligence. Keep reading to learn more about Raymond!

What is your academic and/or professional background? If you're currently working, what do you do?

I did my B.S. in Computer Engineering followed by an M.S. in Computer Science here at Georgia Tech. I'm currently working full time as a software engineer in San Francisco.

Why do you TA for OMSCS?

I continue to TA for CS 6601: Artificial Intelligence because this was the course that opened doors for me back when I first became a grad student. I want to keep paying it forward to help students after me find the same spark that I had found through this course. I think this course also has a lot of potential in terms of the value it can give to students. We're continuously working to improve the course experience for everyone, in hopes that students will look back at this course one day and say that this class meant a lot to them as well.

What is your advice for current OMSCS students?

Three things:

There will be times when you feel overwhelmed by a course's workload or the complexity of the content in a course, and that's normal—it happens to everyone. When that happens, take a moment to step back and think about your motivation for doing OMSCS and to remind yourself that you can do this, that you're not alone in this endeavor. Too often students become lost in the weeds trying to squeeze every point possible out of every assignment and they lose sight of the bigger picture of what they want out of OMSCS in the first place.

I think it's important to not follow everything to a tee—always ask yourself, "Does this make sense?" when working through course material. Be curious, ask questions, get clarifications, and don't be satisfied by getting the right answer; fight to understand why you got the right answer. The students that understand why and can explain their understanding to other students tend to find success both in and beyond the course.

Everything can always be better; don't stop at good enough. It's often when students push that extra mile at the end that they learn the most and discover things they had missed or hadn't considered at all. Outside of a learning context, having a critical eye will also help you see how things can be improved around you (e.g., the way a course is run), and adopting an "if not me, then who" mindset will help you make the world a better place for everyone.

You got this!

What does "computer science" mean to you?

I think there's this misconception out there that "computer science" is where you learn to code. Coding is just a very versatile tool that helps open up different opportunities, like how learning another language helps us converse with more people of different backgrounds and experiences.

However, in my opinion, "computer science" is the exploration of how we can use the tool to create new possibilities and do things that are difficult or impossible to achieve physically. My favorite example is the application of computer algorithms to solve complex protein folding, helping us better understand other scientific fields and opening the door to advanced possibilities.

So "computer science" to me represents this idea that anything is possible, that if you dream up something, then you can probably make it come to life digitally (or maybe even physically). There are no limits to what you can do, and all it takes is an individual with a good idea to make the world a better place.

If you could collaborate with any person, past or present, who would it be, and why?

Someone who I really wish I could work with is the late Randy Pausch. He was an incredible educator and an inspirational figure (aside from also being a very cool Disney Imagineer). It would be an eye-opening experience to help run a course under him, and to see what his educational principles were and how he was able to be such an inspirational figure in the computing community. Unfortunately he is no longer with us, but I recommend listening to his last lecture titled "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams".