Taha Khan » Washington and Lee University
“Seeing students experience ‘A-ha’ moments and receiving nods of affirmation when explaining a concept in class is profoundly fulfilling.”
~ Professor Taha Khan
Taha Khan joined W&L’s Computer Science Department this year as an assistant professor. He teaches Fundamentals of Programming II. Khan’s research focuses on computer security, privacy and human-computer interaction, including cybercrime, commercial VPN services privacy, and privacy-centric management of longitudinal data in the personal cloud.
Khan completed his BS in electrical engineering at Lahore University of Management Sciences in Pakistan and earned his doctorate at the University of Illinois in Chicago.
He took a few moments to answer the following questions about teaching.
1. Why do you teach?
I find teaching to be a very rewarding and gratifying experience. Seeing students experience “A-ha” moments and receiving nods of affirmation when explaining a concept in class is profoundly fulfilling. More importantly, I see a responsibility to empower the next generation of computer scientists with the knowledge and skills to discover and develop innovative solutions to real-world problems.
2. Why study your subject at W&L?
My courses cover an array of topics which include computer hardware design, internet networking and computer security. You should take my courses if you are intrigued by how computers and the internet work and want to acquire an insightful perspective into these technologies.
3. What would be your dream course to teach?
One day, I’d really like to teach a course on the evolution of computer security. Over the past 30 years, both the internet and computers have significantly revolutionized. The initial construction of these systems was based on the model of trust and did not consider security as a fundamental design feature. The course will provide a chronological overview of some of the popular security attacks that have existed in the past decades. It will explain what made these attacks possible and discuss efforts in the community to build secure systems.
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