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EXTENDED GROUP In addition to the core HHMI Education Group, numerous talented individuals ranging from faculty members to undergraduates have participated in our activities at various levels.
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Melanie Barker Berkmen is a Jane Coffin Childs postdoctoral fellow at MIT exploring how the replication machinery and specific regions of the chromosome are actively and dynamically positioned inside the bacterial cell. In addition to regularly attending the education group meetings and seminars, she lent her microscopy expertise to showing local high school students the exciting world of zebrafish development during their field trip to MIT in 2004. In 2005, Melanie is looking forward to participating in the development of the national high school biology olympiad exams, selection, and training programs.
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Eli Meir runs SimBiotic Software, a company that develops software for teaching biology using simulated computer experiments. His software is used on hundreds of college campuses and high schools around the country in introductory biology, ecology, evolution, cell biology and physiology courses. Eli also collaborates with the MIT Teacher Education Program on various educational research projects. Eli received his PhD in zoology from the University of Washington. For more information about SimBiotic Software, please visit www.simbio.com.
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Megan Rokop is an instructor for introductory biology at MIT. She has taught experimental biology, cell biology and genetics in the past. She received her Ph.D. from the MIT Department of Biology, where she studied DNA replication in the bacterium Bacillus subtilis. Megan's long-term career goal is to make time to teach biology courses at both the college and high school levels. Megan's interest in high school science education stemmed from her completion of the MIT Teacher Education Program, headed up by Professor Eric Klopfer, another member of the Extended Biology Education Group.
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Kate Bacon Schneider is an instructor for Experimental Biology and Communication (7.02) at MIT. She particularly enjoys working with 7.02 graduate student TAs on preparing their recitations, and was involved in developing the Scientific Communication curriculum for 7.02. Her latest project is the development of an "online appendix" for 7.02's laboratory manuals, which will provide animations and other resources to help her students understand the course material. Kate received her PhD from MIT in 2001, having performed research on how the bacterial species Bacillus subtilis senses and responds to high population density.
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Kathy Vandiver, a public school science teacher, is now also a Program Coordinator in the outreach arm of the Center for Environmental Health Sciences (CEHS) at MIT. She received her Ph.D. in Cell Biology from Tufts Medical School and her M.A. in teaching from Harvard. Vandiver is interested in curriculum development and teacher professional development projects. Working in conjunction with the LEGO Educational Division, she recently created LEGO Life Science sets, which include LEGO Chromosomes and LEGO DNA. The Edgerton Center at MIT has been one of the field test sites in this biology project.
Edgerton Center
Where to buy the lego kits
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Education Group Volunteers in Addition to the Core and Extended Group Members Gevorg Grigoryan (Keating Lab) Emiko Bare (Keating Lab) Daniel Jarosz (Walker Lab) Veronica Godoy (Walker Lab) Xu Godzina (Walker Lab) Ana Zimmerman (Steiner Lab) Nadia Danilov (Steiner Lab) Ryan Simkovsky (King Lab) Ishara Mills (King Lab) Peter Weigele (King Lab)
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Shoumita Dasgupta is Assistant Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Genetics and Genomics at Boston University. She received her B.S. in Biology from MIT and went on to do her doctoral work at UCSF. After completing her Ph.D., she moved to Boston University's School of Medicine to develop a novel educational program in the newly formed Department of Genetics and Genomics. The goal of this program is to teach students to apply the approaches of classical genetics and modern genomics to biomedical research and clinical practice. In addition to developing the curriculum for this unique Ph.D. program, Dr. Dasgupta has also taught both graduate and medical students on campus, where she works to implement interdisciplinary, active-learning methods in the classroom.
Shoumita Dasgupta's website
BU Graduate Program website
BU Graduate and Medical Courses Website
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Helen Donis-Keller (Olin College)
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John Belcher is a professor in the MIT department of Physics. He has been involved in and NSF sponsored initiative to help students visualize different concepts in physics in 3-dimensions using his program called TEALSim. He has partnered with the education group on the creation of a 3-D interactive protein simulation software to be use in teaching biology.
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Judith Fischer is currently a consultant for the Teaching and Learning Lab at MIT. She took her degrees in biology and science education at Carleton, Johns Hopkins and the University of Massachusetts; taught at Simmons College; and recently retired from Lesley University where she taught biology. Since 1988 she has been affiliated with Paul Williams at the University of Wisconsin and his Fast Plants program, on which she did her dissertation. Judy has served as a consultant to schools and universities across the United States and abroad; recently at two new science high schools in Qatar. She also evaluated innovative science education projects for NSF, NASA, the US Department of Education, and other institutions.
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Jonathan King is a professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institite of Technology. The primary goal of Jonathan's research group is to determine how amino acid sequences direct protein shape and structure. He simultaneously maintains an active role in education research and development both with internal groups at MIT and in the greater Boston community. He will be intimately involved in development of a protein structure viewing interface in collaboration with the HHMI education group.
Jonathan King's website
The King Lab website
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Eric Klopfer is the Director of the MIT Teacher Education Program, and the Scheller Career Development Professor of Science Education and Educational Technology at MIT. Klopfer's research focuses on the development and use of computer games and simulations for building understanding of science and complex systems. His research projects include StarLogo, a desktop platform that enables students and teachers to create computer simulations of complex systems, as well as location aware and participatory simulations on handheld (Palm and PocketPC) and wearable computers. Klopfer's work combines the construction of new software tools with research and development of new pedagogical supports that support the use of these tools in the classroom. He is the co-author of the book, "Adventures in Modeling: Exploring Complex, Dynamic Systems with StarLogo."
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Rudy Mitchell is Associate Director for Assessment and Evaluation at MIT's Teaching and Learning Center. Currently, he is working with the HHMI Education Group to develop evaluation methods to assess several of the Group's educational innovations. Prior to joining MIT, Rudy was a faculty member at Brown University and Harvard Medical School, where he created the Cognitive Behavior Survey series, evaluation tools used nationally to profile learning behavior of medical students and residents.
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Charles Schubert is a software programmer in MIT's Department of Academic Computing. His projects in the department center around the redesign of research-level software for use as educational teaching tools. Chuck will be collaborating with the Education Group directly on our project to create a scalable 3D interface for the visualization of macromolecular structures.
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