Rate My Professor Toby Boyson

Dr Toby Boyson is an education-focused Senior Lecturer in electrical engineering at the School of Engineering and Information Technology, UNSW Canberra, University of New South Wales. In his current role, he dedicates most of his time to teaching and student support, delivering courses in analog circuits and practical engineering within the Electrical Engineering degree. He manages the Protolab, UNSW Canberra's makerspace, and was previously co-chair of YoWIE, an outreach program encouraging young women to pursue engineering studies. Boyson is recognized for fostering inclusive learning environments, particularly for neurodivergent students, earning the 2022 UNSW Students’ Choice Teaching Award. Prior to his education-focused appointment, he conducted research on optoelectronic instrumentation for detecting explosives and chemical warfare agents, characterizing hypersonic flows, and validating control algorithms. Techniques he developed in instrumentation and signal processing were finalists in the UNSW Innovation Awards in 2012 and the Australian Museum Eureka Prize in 2015. He holds several patents and patent applications in signal processing and spectroscopic instrumentation, with efforts toward commercialization in the United States. Additionally, he invented methods for desalinating water and degrading biodegradable plastics.

Boyson’s research interests encompass all aspects of engineering education, including the interplay between affective and cognitive development in engineering students, problem-solving and practical laboratory skills through cognitive load theory, engineering writing, and strategies to increase and sustain women's representation in engineering degrees. His scholarly contributions include numerous peer-reviewed publications. Key works feature 'Temperature measurements of the background gas and metastable argon atoms in N2/Ar nanosecond repetitively pulsed discharges' (Plasma Sources Science and Technology, 2020), 'Building girls’ confidence in themselves as future engineers' (Teaching Science, 2019), 'An experimental study of pressure distribution nonlinearity in a circular micro-tube' (Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science, 2018), 'Real-time multiplexed digital cavity-enhanced spectroscopy' (Optics Letters, 2015), and 'Pulsed quantum cascade laser based hypertemporal real-time headspace measurements' (Optics Express, 2014). He was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2019. These efforts underscore his impact on both technical advancements in optoelectronics and spectroscopy and innovative pedagogical practices in engineering education.