*Taken in Fall 2020 (Online Instruction)*

Probably the only class I will fail in college, and I literally don't care. For ANY other class I would, especially with my tight graduation requirements.

Babakhani is completely unengaging. Monotonous voice, lectures are reading pared-down book information in slides with very little expansion on concepts in either example or theory form. Unlike in any other online class, he does not turn his camera on, giving the impression of a lack of vested interest in his class.

My biggest takeaway from this class was this: a student asked a question about the midterm exam, and Babakhani refused to answer the question. He interrupted the student multiple times to state he would dismiss any questions, until the student was able to clarify that their question was about answer formatting.

If you like RF, the material should be interesting. Just don't take it with Babakhani.

I think the other review is being a bit too harsh.

Overall, Babakhani did a pretty good job this quarter. The entire class is based out of Pozar's "Microwave Engineering" which is an really well written textbook (I've also heard it is basically a required text to get into RF). This being the case, Babakhani structured his lectures to give better intuition for how the textbook went through certain derivations or he'd just rehash what was in the book. One thing I appreciated about this style is that he'd go through the textbook's examples and then give tons of examples and uses for the concepts we were learning which made the lectures pretty engaging. Yes sometimes he'd be going through some long winded mathematical derivations which I'm sure maybe 3 students would follow to the end but he definitely caught your attention in other ways.

Assignments for this class were taken right out of Pozar, usually 4 or 5 problems. The exams (6 problems) were all take home (it seemed like he might be considering keeping this style post-COVID), week long, and open textbook/notes. Surprisingly, he also kept the exams at a level easier or on par with the homework but he and the TA won't help you/give leading questions which is reasonable. Honestly, as long as you read the textbook and can do the homework yourself, getting a good grade on the exams is not hard at all.

I came away from this class seeing Babakhani as a very good prof. He was very reasonable throughout the quarter (one thing that stuck out is that he said something like "I don't really believe in memorization or timed tests. I just think you should be able to solve problems given the textbook") and the extra context he brought to the class through examples and his research got me really excited to learn more about RF.

Prof. Babakhani uses slides, which means its extremely easy to zone out. Some of the derivations were complicated and really hard for me to understand, such as those of resonators and Q, and its not exactly explained clearly. It takes alot of debate/conversation with the TA. Its difficult to figure out to which depth to learn to concepts to, since the book is not exactly elucidating upon first read. The class is a great introduction to advanced topics though. Midterm and Final were take home with a week to do. He finishes lectures half an hour early and lets you ask questions. All in all, I'd say he is an OK professor.