The Data Science Teaching and Learning Lab

The Data Science Teaching and Learning Lab (DSTL, pronounced “distill”) at UCSD conducts research studies and prototypes novel tools for teaching and learning data science. The overarching goal of our group is to discover how instructors use (or struggle to use!) software tools to accomplish the many tasks of teaching, and design new tools that can improve the lives of data science instructors everywhere.

What we do: Our group applies methods from Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) to understand how instructors use software by conducting interviews and usability studies. We also build and maintain software tools like Pandas Tutor, used by over 20,000 people per year.

Who we are: Our group is led by professor Samuel Lau in the Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute at UC San Diego and a small (but mighty!) team of students:

Special thanks to our lab alumni and former members, listed below in alphabetical order along with their first position after graduating UCSD.

• Christopher Lum – Caesar's Entertainment
• Gabriel Cha – MS at Columbia University
• Guoxuan (Jason) Xu
• Owen Miller
• Parna Praveen – AWS
• Qirui (Sara) Zheng
• Ylesia (Yi Xing) Wu – MS at Harvard University