A molecular/cellular
biologist (at UC Boulder), my other academic interest has been how scientific ideas are understood, misunderstood, and presented to students.
Background: The child of immigrants (and first gen. college student), I earned a degree in biophysics from Penn State working with Alex Keith and Wally Snipes and a Ph.D. from CalTech working with Bob Stroud. At UCSF the neurobiology group (Zach Hall et al) rescued me. After post-doctoral work with Martin Raff (University College London) and Lee Rubin (Rockefeller University), I moved to Boulder in 1983. I have studied a range of topics, from bacterial virus assembly, neurotransmitter receptor structure, cytoskeletal organization, signaling systems, and ciliary function – much of the later work in the context of the clawed frog Xenopus laevis.
With NSF support, Kathy Garvin-Doxas and I developed the Biological Concepts Instrument (BCI) [link] to monitor conceptual confusions in students. Around the same time, I transformed the introductory molecular biology course into a interactive web site and a suite of virtuallaboratory activities developed by Tom Lundy. These projects led to a long term collaboration with Melanie Cooper (Michigan State) and the NSF-supported, research validated reformed (and free) curricula in general (CLUE: Chemistry, Life, the Universe & Everything) and organic chemistry (OCLUE) and molecular biology (biofundamentals) – see (biofundamentals paper – LibreText site).
I have been a Pew Biomedical Scholar and am a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). I was named the 2012-2013 Outstanding Undergraduate Science Teacher by the Society for College Science Teaching and have received a Boulder Faculty Assembly Teaching Excellence award. I have been co-director (now advisor) to CU Teach , the science teaching certification program at CU Boulder.
I have served as a PLOS ONE Academic Editor since 2010. My orcid ID is: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5816-9771
bioliteracy 