The best professor and mentor!!! You'll find out he's beyond amazing once you get to know him. Very knowledgeable and passionate about his field, shows in lectures. Extremely supportive and loves to talk to students about anything: career stuff, studying abroad, or even his cats, he's so chill. Soft-spoken with a fun Scottish accent and mustache.

In my experience, Balkind is the most supportive professor in this department by a mile. I took 154 last year and, even though the workload was more than I could manage at the time and I really struggled as a result, I have only good things to say about him as a professor and a mentor.

Professor Balkind is super knowledgeable, never leaving any a question unsolved at the end of class. He shared very inspiring cutting-edge research conducted by himself & in the field, and really willing to hear about any stuff you're doing in the field. He's also very accessible outside class, and he designs really fun projects for us to work on.

Pretty interesting lectures, but a lot of topics were really complex and hard to follow. The good thing is that all the grading (quizzes, midterm, final) are all online, so you can reference your notes for the hard stuff. A lot of the labs were hard, and they're worth 40% of your grade, so make sure to go to OH and get help early in the week.