You are here: Home / Archives for teaching

Piasta Receives the Louis Dembitz Brandeis Prize for Excellence in Teaching

April 25, 2023 By

Kene PiastaKene Piasta, Assistant Professor of Biology, has been presented the 2023 Louis Dembitz Brandeis Prize for Excellence in Teaching. This prestigious award is given each year to a faculty member of any rank that exhibits outstanding teaching skills. Piasta was selected by Dorothy Hodgson, the Dean of Arts and Sciences based upon recommendations from a faculty committee (including previous prize recipients) and input from the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. Decisions are based on student nominations, teaching evaluations, Faculty Activity Reports and CVs.

Liz Hedstrom, Professor of Biology and Chemistry and Biology Department Chair, said “Kene is a remarkable educator and an exceptionally worthy recipient of the LDB Prize for Excellence in Teaching. Kene has a gift for making dry subjects like statistics engaging without losing rigor and he somehow manages to create personal interactions in the largest introductory courses.  We are very lucky to have him at Brandeis.”

Piasta received his PhD in Biochemistry from Brandeis University in 2011.

Congratulations, Kene!

Filed Under: awards, Biology, division of science, division of science, division of science, General, labs, Undergrads Tagged With: , , , , ,

Divisional Prize Instructors design & teach new classes

December 7, 2021 By

The University Prize Instructorships have been a great opportunity for our graduate students to gain experience designing and teaching their own class, and a great opportunity for our undergraduates to engage in learning new areas with a great instructor. When the UPIs were put on hiatus during the pandemic, the Division of Science stepped in to keep this opportunity going for our community. We are really excited for the new courses that will be taught by Xin Yao Lin and Narges Iraji in the Spring 2022 semester- “Science versus Science Fiction” by Narges Iraji, and “Technology Use and Well-Being: Multidisciplinary Perspectives”.

Xin Yao Lin

Xin Yao LinI am very honored and delighted to receive the Divisional Prize Instructorship. I am currently a 5th-year psychology PhD student and I will be teaching a psychology course entitled “PSYC 55B: Technology Use and Well-Being: Multidisciplinary Perspectives” in the spring of 2022. The increase in technology use is changing how we connect, feel, and act. We are relying on technology more than ever, but whether the increased usage of technology is beneficial or detrimental to well-being has been controversial. Drawing on perspectives from psychology, neuroscience, computer-human interaction, and public health, this course explores the positive and negative impact of technology usage on our well-being across the lifespan. We will examine technology use in computer-mediated communication (e.g., smartphone, social media, internet, social apps), mHealth and telehealth, gaming, and other technology trends (e.g., Artificial intelligence, robots, virtual reality), and will explore how these technologies influence social life, adult development and aging, and health/health behavior (e.g., physical activity, diet, sleep).

I am very thankful for this opportunity provided by the Division of Science, and for my mentors and peers who have provided feedback and supported me along the way. I look forward to teaching this course and engaging students with how technology influences our social life, how we develop and age, and our health/health behavior.

Narges Iraji

Narges IrajiThe course Science and Science Fiction, designed for students with little to no science or math background, encourages conversations around science within the context of culture. Reading the works of science fiction by a diverse group of authors and discussing the science and imagination in them illuminates the inseparability of science from its human nature. I hope that this approach not only bridges the materials taught in class and the outside world but also sparks a curiosity that goes beyond the classroom.

Our inner urge to observe, decode patterns, and predict has existed well past the modern times and so has our passing of knowledge to the future in the form of storytelling. The combination of imagination and science is nothing new but the access to both, who can imagine and who can be a scientist, has changed throughout history. During the course, the students will read, discuss, and write about science fiction stories that inspire questions and problems which call for mathematical modeling. After becoming more familiar with some well-known mathematical models in areas such as population modeling and epidemiology, the students start working on a final project. They will formulate a question related to what they are passionate or curious about and pursue the answer using the tools that they have gained from the course. The goal is not to solve the problem, but to gain some insight into the steps required in doing so.

Teaching a University Prize Instructorship course has been a dream of mine since I heard about this opportunity in my first or second year. I am grateful for this, and thankful to all those who are helping me along the way. Numerous challenges follow developing a course, and while being one of the greatest projects that I have taken on, it has tested my patience a few times. I hope that after serving as a University Prize Instructorship instructor, I can help other graduate students who are interested in this opportunity by sharing some resources, such as information on inviting speakers or reserving classrooms with computers. My experience as a graduate student in physics and my research in the field of mathematical biology have truly led me to a new perspective. I now look around and find questions in all that I observe knowing someone else might have already started working on the answer. The course, Science and Science Fiction, encapsulates one of my attempts to pass this curiosity about the universe and life forward.

Filed Under: awards, division of science, grad students, labs, Neuroscience, Physics, Psychology Tagged With: , , , , ,

“Lessons from the Lobster” details Eve Marder’s research

July 12, 2018 By

Lessons from Lobster. Photo courtesy of MIT.By Eve Marder

Students often tell me that they don’t want to be scientists because it is too lonely. That always surprises me, because laboratories are filled with people. One of the conclusions that readers of Charlotte Nassim’s “Lessons from the Lobster” should take from the book is that laboratories are communities of scholars of all ages. Lifelong friendships are often formed and sustained as laboratory colleagues may spend as much time together as they do with other friends and family. When Charlotte approached me about writing the story of my research, I was very surprised because there are many eminent neuroscientists, including many other eminent female neuroscientists. What convinced me to work with Charlotte was her wish to reach teenage girls, before they decided that a career in science was not for them. And this decision was validated when a few days ago, one of the students (now working in a neighboring lab) whom I had taught in NBio 140, Principles of Neuroscience, told me that she loved the book, but wished she had had it when she was in high school. We agreed that after she finished the book, that she would donate it to her small home town library, in the hopes that it would encourage other high school students to consider becoming scientists.

Charlotte’s book is a piece of science history. She read our lab notebooks, and talked to many ex-lab members. Her choices of what to emphasize and how to frame the scientific issues speak as much about what she finds scientifically and sociologically interesting as it does about what I was thinking. By reading deeply, she relied not only on my flawed memory, but on what I and others had written. For me, it is an extraordinary reminder that even scientists who revere data have only partial recollections of their own intellectual paths.

Filed Under: General, Neuroscience Tagged With: , , ,

Brandeis’ Pioneering Science Posse Program

May 4, 2017 By
Photo: Mike Lovett

Samia Tamazi ’20

BrandeisNow has posted an article about the history and accomplishments of the Brandeis’ Science Posse program. Read the following excerpt or the entire article:

In June, Macareno and his posse, all Class of 2020, get off Amtrak’s Acela Express train and take a shuttle bus to Brandeis for science boot camp. On the first day, they gather in a classroom in the Abelson physics building […]

(Melissa) Kosinski-Collins, who earned a PhD at MIT, tells them college science is profoundly different from high-school science. With equal parts candor and caring, she sets high expectations, describing the intense workload. The students know that they will be held to lofty standards and that she will support them.

Later in the day, they gather around a long lab table in the Shapiro Science Center, in an area Kosinski-Collins calls Hufflepuff — a nod to one of the houses at Harry Potter’s Hogwarts School. An array of equipment is scattered before them — pipettes, balances, bottles of acetic acid (vinegar) and sodium bicarbonate (baking soda). There are also aluminum foil, Kimwipes, Scotch tape and Ziploc bags.

The students’ assignment is to build an air bag. When acetic acid combines with sodium bicarbonate, they produce carbon dioxide. The students must figure out how much of each chemical to add to fully inflate a quart-size Ziploc bag. But they also have to protect an egg placed inside the bag. This is where the foil, tape and extra bags come in. Along with the cushion of air, these items can be used to keep the egg from cracking when they drop the bag from the Science Center steps, about 15 feet above the ground.

There’s an important catch. Several months earlier, at a meeting in New York, the students got the same assignment. They also completed lab reports describing the quantities of chemicals they used and how they arranged the materials inside the bag to protect the egg. These lab reports are now handed out to different students. They have 10 minutes to repeat the earlier experiment using the reports as a guide […]

Read more at BrandeisNow

Filed Under: labs, teaching, Undergrads Tagged With: , , , ,

New Faculty Member Joins the Physics Department

June 10, 2015 By

A new faculty member is joining the Physics department starting on January 1, 2016.

W. Benjamin RogersW. Benjamin (Ben) Rogers is currently a research associate in Applied Physics at Harvard University under the supervision of Professor Vinothan Manoharan. Before coming to Harvard, he completed his Ph.D. in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania and his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Delaware.

Ben’s research focuses on developing quantitative tools and design strategies to understand and control the self-assembly of soft matter. He is interested in elucidating the role of specificity in complex self-assembly, designing responsive nanoscale materials by controlling phase transitions in colloidal suspensions, and understanding how coupled chemical reactions give rise to active materials, which can move, organize, repair, or replicate. At the intersection of soft condensed matter, biophysics, and DNA nanotechnology, his research utilizes techniques from synthetic chemistry, optical microscopy, micromanipulation, and statistical mechanics.

Filed Under: labs, Physics Tagged With: , , , , , ,

7 Division of Science Faculty Recently Promoted

June 2, 2015 By

Congratulations to the following 7 Division of Science faculty members were recently promoted:

katz_dbDonald B. Katz (Psychology) has been promoted to Professor of Psychology. Don came to Brandeis as an Assistant Professor with a joint appointment in the Volen Center for Complex Systems in 2002 and was promoted to Associate Professor and awarded tenure in 2008. Don’s teaching and research serve central roles in both Psychology and the Neuroscience program. His systems approach to investigating gustation blends behavioral testing of awake rodents with multi-neuronal recording and pharmacological, optogenetic, and modelling techniques. Broad themes of the neural dynamics of perceptual coding, learning, social learning, decision making, and insight run through his work on gustation. For his research, Don has won the 2007 Polak Award and the 2004 Ajinomoto Young Investigator in Gustation Award, both from the Association for Chemoreception Sciences. Don has taught “Introduction to Behavioral Neuroscience” (NPSY11b), “Advanced Topics in Behavioral Neuroscience” (NPSY197a), “Neuroscience Proseminar” (NBIO250a), “Proseminar in Brain, Body, and Behavior II” (PSYC302a), “How Do We Know What We Know?” (SYS1c). For his excellence in teaching, Don has been recognized with the 2013 Jeanette Lerman-Neubauer ’69 and Joseph Neubauer Prize for Excellence in Teaching and Mentoring, the 2006 Brandeis Student Union Teaching Award, and the 2006 Michael L. Walzer Award for Teaching and Scholarship.

Nicolas RohlederNicolas Rohleder (Psychology) has been promoted to Associate Professor in Psychology. Nic is a member of the Volen Center for Complex Systems and on the faculty of the Neuroscience and Health, Science, Society and Policy programs. His course offerings include “Health Psychology” (PSYC38a), “Stress, Physiology and Health” (NPSY141a), and” Research Methods and Laboratory in Psychology” (PSYC52a). Nic’s research investigates how acute and chronic or repeated stress experiences affect human health across individuals and age groups. His laboratory performs studies with human participants using methods than span behavioral to molecular to understand how the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and sympathetic nervous system (SNS) regulate peripheral immunological responses and how these processes mediate cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and cancer, and aging. His research and teaching fill unique niches for all his Brandeis departmental and program affiliations. Nic’s research excellence has been recognized outside Brandeis with awards including the 2013 Herbert Weiner Early Career Award of the American Psychosomatic Society and the 2011 Curt P. Richter Award of the International Society of Psychoneuroendocrinology.

Matthew HeadrickMatthew Headrick (Physics) has been promoted to Associate Professor of Physics. He works at the intersection of three areas of modern theoretical physics: quantum field theory, general relativity, and quantum information theory. In particular, he uses information-theoretic techniques to study the structure of entanglement — a fundamental and ubiquitous property of quantum systems — in various kinds of field theories. Much of his work is devoted to the study of so-called “holographic” field theories, which are equivalent, in a subtle and still mysterious way, to theories of gravity in higher-dimensional spacetimes. Holographic theories have revealed a deep connection between entanglement and spacetime geometry, and Headrick has made significant contributions to the elucidation of this connection. Understanding the role of entanglement in holographic theories, and in quantum gravity more generally, may eventually lead to an understanding of the microscopic origin of space and time themselves.

Isaac Krauss

Isaac Krauss (Chemistry) has been promoted to Associate Professor of Chemistry. He is an organic chemist and chemical biologist whose research is at the interface of carbohydrate chemistry and biology. His lab has devised tools for directed evolution of modified DNA and peptides as an approach to designing carbohydrate vaccines against HIV. Krauss is also a very popular teacher and the recipient of the 2015 Walzer prize in teaching for tenure-track faculty.

Xiaodong Liu (Psychology) has been promoted to Associate Professor in Psychology. Xiaodong provides statistical training for graduate students in Psychology, Heller School, IBS, Neuroscience, Biology, and Computer Science, he serves as a statistical consultant for Xiaodong LiuPsychology faculty and student projects, and he performs research on general & generalized linear modeling and longitudinal data analysis, which he applies to child development, including psychological adjustment and school performance. He teaches “Advanced Psychological Statistics I and II” (PSYC210a,b), “SAS Applications” (PSYC140a), “Multivariate Statistics I: Applied Structural Equation Modeling” (PSYC215a), and “Multivariate Statistics II: Applied Hierarchical Linear Models” (PSYC216a). He is developing a new course on “The R Statistical Package and Applied Bayes Analysis”, and he recently won a Provost’s Innovations in Teaching Grant for “Incorporating Project-based modules in Learning and Teaching of Applied Statistics”.

Gabriella SciollaGabriella Sciolla (Physics) has been promoted to Professor of Physics. She is a particle physicist working on the ATLAS experiment at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. Sciolla and her group study the properties of the newly discovered Higgs Boson and search for Dark Matter particles produced in high-energy proton-proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider. Sciolla is also responsible for the reconstruction and calibration of the muons produced in ATLAS. These particles are key to both Higgs studies and searches for New Physics.

Nianwen Xue (Computer Science) has been promoted to Associate Professor of Computer Science.  The Computer Science Department is pleased to annNianwen Xueounce the promotion of Nianwen (Bert) Xue to Associate Professor with tenure. Since joining Computer Science he has made significant contributions to the research and teaching efforts in Computational Linguistics, including growing a masters program from zero up to 18 students this year. His publications are very well regarded, and focus on the development and use of large corpora for natural language processing, especially in Chinese. He has built a sizable lab with diverse funding that students from around the world are vying to enter.

Thank you to the following department chairs for their contributions to this post:

  • Paul DiZio, Psychology
  • Jane Kondev, Physics
  • Jordan Pollack, Computer Science
  • Barry Snider, Chemistry
Filed Under: chemistry, Computer Science, General, labs, Neuroscience, Physics, Psychology Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Protected by Akismet
Blog with WordPress

Welcome Guest | Login (Brandeis Members Only)