2026 Winter Semester (UWaterloo)
Table of Contents
For a more detailed recap (written in Mandarin), see here.
Courses
Below are some of the courses I took in the 2026 winter semester at UWaterloo. Key:
- PHYS: Department of Physics
- (A/P)MATH: Department of (Applied/Pure) Mathematics
- BIOL: Department of Biology
- ENGL: Department of English Language
Overview
| Course | Useful | Easy | Recommend |
|---|---|---|---|
| Popular Potter | ★★★★☆ | ★★★★★ | ★★★★★ |
| Computational Modeling of Cellular Systems | ★★★★★ | ★★★☆☆ | ★★★★☆ |
| Complex Analysis | ★★★★☆ | ★★★★★ | ★★★★☆ |
| Statistical Mechanics | ★★★★★ | ★★★☆☆ | ★★★★★ |
| Introduction to Biophysics | ★★☆☆☆ | ★★★★★ | ★★☆☆☆ |
ENGL 108P Popular Potter
Lecturer: Professor Jennifer Harris
Grade: TBD
Department: ENGL
Credit(s): 0.5
Materials:
- In-class notes
Popular Potter is a popular class among freshman students at Waterloo University. As it turned out, there were in fact many freshmen, and I was one of very few in higher grades and from a STEM department, not to say the only exchange student.
In class, we covered various topics related to literary analysis. Surprisingly, Harry Potters has a hugely rich collection of social and literary symbolism hidden within every layer. In one class, we analyzed the petronus charms of each main character, and made a comprehensive list. Most surprising of all, I found out UWaterloo does not only have a class dedicated to the Harry Potter series, but even has its own Quidditch team! If you are interested, you can look here.
Just before the semester ended, we had to wrap up everything we’ve learned from the Scaffold Project, and write a 5,000 word essay on the main topic from the academic paper of our choice.
AMATH/BIOL 382 Computational Modeling of Cellular Systems
Lecturer: Professor Brian Ingalls
Grade: A
Department: AMATH
Credit(s): 0.5
Materials:
- Textbook on computational systems biology by Prof. Ingalls
- Lecture slides
PMATH 342 Complex Analysis
Lecturer: Professor Jason P. Bell
Grade: A+
Department: PMATH
Credit(s): 0.5
Materials:
- Lecture notes
Professor Bell is one of the best teacher I have met. His classes are also very lively, with him making occasional witty remarks, which I sadly did not get to write down in full.
I got full marks in the midterm exam, which consisted mainly of conceptual problems without too much involved calculation, and a few proof questions that filled in details of a proof for a theorem taught in class. However, the good news did not persist till the finals. The complex analysis final exam was given very late into the finals month, by which time I was both in a very bad mental state and also looking forward to return to Taiwan. The final exam was structured similarly as the midterm, but included all the materials up to the last week, with the exception of the proof of Dirichlet’s theorem.
Toward the end of the semester, Professor Bell briefly talked about some applications of the Riemann mapping theorem, and held a large Q&A session for everyone on our last day. All kinds of unexpected questions sprang up.
Overall, I would say the first few weeks were comparatively slow, where he repeated many theorems from real analysis that could’ve been skimmed over – but then this is also what makes him such a great lecturer from the common perspective. I did not learn too much from the lectures themselves, but the creative problem sets helped me get a broader view on the subject. For example, our first homework set concerned calculations about Julia sets and fixed points of iterated functions. It is only until later that I realized Julia sets are intimately connected to the Mandelbrot set, in the sense that every single point c on the Mandelbrot set corresponds to a unique Julia set.
PHYS 359 Statistical Mechanics
Lecturer: Professor Alan Jamison
Grade: A
Department: PHYS
Credit(s): 0.5
Materials:
- Schrorder
- Lecture notes
The professor has a bit of a personality, and tries to come off as a mean person during the first class. However, it turns out that he cares a lot about his students, and is a great lecturer and communicator. He started out as a theoretical high energy physicist, and is said to have switched to cold atoms since it pays much more. His classes are very well structured, and we usually start with general theory, followed by some examples of applying the theory to real-life phenomena.
We were not required to hand in every homework assignment. For example, . The
PHYS/BIOL 280 Introduction to Biophysics
Lecturer: Professor Zoya Leonenko
Grade: A+
Department: PHYS
Credit(s): 0.5
Materials:
- Lcture slides
In agreement with other student reviews, Professor Leonenko’s lectures were not very exciting. However, something that did help me a lot were her lecture slides for the last third of the semester. The semester is structured this way: a review of basic physics, including mechanics, kinematics, thermal physics, optics, and some overly simple biophysical models; midterm 1; a review of biology, in particular molecular biology; midterm 2; detailed review of various experimental techniques in modern experimental biophysics research; and final exam.
The experimental section of the lecture introduced a large range of experimental techniques, including optical tweezers, electrophoresis, various spectroscopy methods, imaging techniques, the Langmuir-Blodgett Technique, surface plasmon resonance, patch clamp, and EEG. If I were to teach such a class, I would skip the first two thirds of the material on general physics and biology, and instead focus more on explaining the physical principles of each technique, in particular that of spectroscopy, common microscopy methods, electrophoresis, and basic data analysis.
During the first class, Qi Wang and her friend came over and asked if I wanted to be in a group for the final project, which included writing a short term paper on some topic related to experimental biophysics. Since neither of us were avid participants of lectures, and Qi had flight training in the morning, it was surprisingly difficult for us to discuss the project. At last we met over Google Meet when I was in Denver, and decided we would write an exposition on optical tweezers.
Interestingly, in a PHYS10 poster presentation event in the later half of the semester, where Edward presented his work in the Perimeter Institute on some gauge theory, I saw and chatted with one of Professor Leonenko’s students. Their work was concerned with quantum biology, in particular trying to explain a specific mechanism in photosynthesis.
Other Activities
I had a great time at UWaterloo. Here are some exciting (or maybe not) things I did:
- Jan. 10-day trip to Tokyo, Japan
- Jan. Bouldering at Grand River Rocks
- Feb. Winter camping with the UWaterloo Outdoors Club
- Feb. Snowboarding at Blue Mountain Resort with the Taiwanese Student Association of UWaterloo and UToronto
- Submitted three works to the Literary Prize at NTU, where one ended up in the shorlist (modern poetry) and one won (short essay)
- Mar. Flew to Denver for the 2026 APS Global Summit
- Apr. Took GRE from home