Hong Pan

Math, Long-term Substitute

Hong is a scientist-turned-teacher who believes in teaching the reasons behind the mathematics, not just the steps, and in mathematics as the art of discovering patterns in nature. He holds a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Purdue and a B.Sc. in Biomedical Engineering, and spent more than two decades in brain-imaging research on the faculties of Cornell and Harvard before making teaching the center of his life. In recent years, he has taught the undergraduate probability, statistics, and data science sequence at Simmons University and graduate data science at Northeastern and Boston University. Teaching is the family trade: Hong grew up on a university campus in Shanghai, the son of a world history professor and an upper-school principal. Outside the classroom, he is a literary translator between English and Chinese, with published work ranging from Kafka to Franzen, and a native Mandarin speaker who delights in living between two cultures, the sciences and the humanities. Ask him about a good novel, a hard problem, or the art of carrying a sentence from one language into another.