My teaching philosophy is based on a few principles:

1. Students learn best when they can relate what they are learning to their every day life. It is up to us instructors to highlight these correlations drawing from the reality of our student body.
2. What you learn through experience tends to stay with you longer than what you only hear about. Therefore, as much as possible I adopt a very hands-on approach to teaching.
3. Learning should be enjoyable. Proposing interesting questions that require learning certain topics in order to find answers makes the lectures more dynamic and challenging and, therefore, more enjoyable.
4. The classroom environment should nurture confidence in the students and trust between instructor and students. I believe that knowing the rules up front helps to create this kind of environment. It is important to clearly state at the beginning of the academic quarter what methods will be used for evaluating student performance, what goals the students are expected to achieve and how that translates into grades.
5. Collaborative work, critical thinking and problem-solving skills are fundamental to knowledge, and stimulating them is central to my teaching style.

Courses

BIO310 (Cell and Molecular Biology). This is a traditional course with no lab component. Cells and their processes are better understood by using diagrams and figures. Therefore the lectures are developed in Power Point and are made available to students as pdf format lecture notes with 2-3 slides per page. I also use movies and animations (distributed with text books), and protein structure visualization to enrich the lectures. For protein structure visualization, I use a computer program (VMD from UIUC) to display experimentally determined three-dimensional (3D) structures of proteins involved in cellular processes we are studying in class. This allows me to move the protein three-dimensionally on the screen and emphasize aspects of protein structure/function and protein/ligand interactions that are important for understanding cell function. Although this is a large class (50-60 students), I use hands-on activities in the classroom as much as possible.

BIO459/459L (Bioinformatics). This is a hands-on problem-based course with all lectures held in a computer laboratory. Students learn basic concepts and apply computational tools to understand biological systems. Grading is based on lab reports, a final report covering methods description, results, data analysis, and conclusions on what biological function an unknown sequence assigned to each student is likely to have, and a class presentation on their assigned project. Topics covered: Windows vs. Linux/Unix; web-based databases, search engines, and servers; DNA data structure and sequence analysis; amino acid sequence analysis, sequence patterns, families and domains; sequence comparison - pairwise, multiple and profile alignments, sequence identity vs. sequence similarity; phylogenetic analysis and evolution; protein structure - topology, visualization, manipulation, protein structure health; protein structure prediction - secondary structure, homology modeling, structure optimization; protein complexes - active/binding sites, protein-protein and protein-ligand interactions atlas.

BIO499/499L (Computer-assisted Drug Design). This course covers the use of computational tools in the discovery of medicinal drugs. Students are introduced to general aspects of drug discovery and development, and basic principles of drug action and pharmacology. Scientific literature describing the discovery process of currently marketed drugs is used to illustrate applications of computational methods. Students apply these methods during laboratory exercises. At the conclusion of the course, students will have a good understanding of the principles of drug action, a working knowledge of the main computer-assisted techniques used in the design of pharmacologically active drugs, and a general knowledge of drugs currently used to treat hypertension and diabetes. This is a very good course for students headed to pharmacy/medical/vet/dental school. No computer background is required. Taking BIO459/459L before this course is recommended.

BIO535 (Advanced Cell Biology). This is a graduate-level course. Two major topics of Cell Biology are covered by two different professors. Each student is required to present (professional meeting style) a scientific paper related to each of the major topics for the quarter. Chemical Senses is my theme for this course and I explore cellular processes involved with the senses of taste and smell in humans and other species. Power Point for lectures and protein structure visualization are used in this class. Since the enrollment in BIO535 is normally under 25 students, I am able to introduce exploratory in-classroom activities to make the lectures more enjoyable. Some of these “nose and tongue”-on activities are the perception of taste modalities using household substances, sweet response to artificial sweeteners, odor descriptors, artificial vs. natural odorants, and the use of scratch and sniff olfactory function tests. The papers selected for student presentations cover a wide range of topics within chemical senses: genetics, molecular biology, bioinformatics, psychophysiology and animal behavior.