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How to flip your class online when the world is flipping out, at Webinar, Tuesday, March 24, 2020:
flip_your_course_online_01.pdf

The sudden transition to online teaching necessitated by the coronavirus pandemic is a good opportunity to rethink our approach to teaching. In this interactive demonstration I will discuss how changing synchronous and  instructor-paced activities to asynchronous and self-paced activities not only facilitates the move to online teaching, but also provides an opportunity to improve the quality of education.

How to flip your class online when the world is flipping out, at Webinar, Friday, March 20, 2020:
flip_your_course_online.pdf

The sudden transition to online teaching necessitated by the coronavirus pandemic is a good opportunity to rethink our approach to teaching. In this interactive demonstration I will discuss how changing synchronous and  instructor-paced activities to asynchronous and self-paced activities not only facilitates the move to online teaching, but also provides an opportunity to improve the quality of education.

Twilight of the Lecture: Peer Instruction for Active Learning, at 1st International Conference on Teaching and Learning, Muscat, Oman, Monday, February 10, 2020:
2._pi_oman.pdf

Education is more than just transfer of information, yet that is what is mostly done in large introductory courses -- instructors present material (even though this material might be readily available in printed form) and for students the main purpose of lectures is to take down as many notes as they can. Few students have the ability, motivation, and discipline to synthesize all the information delivered to them. Yet synthesis is perhaps the most important -- and most elusive -- aspect of education. I will show how shifting the focus in lectures from delivering information to...

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Tools for Peer Instruction — A Workshop, at 1st International Conference on Teaching and Learning, Muscat, Oman, Sunday, February 9, 2020:
1._workshop_oman.pdf
It has been suggested the lack of interaction in large lecture courses is to blame for the many problems facing these courses: declining enrollments, low attendance, poor evaluations, and disappointing retention. We offer a way of redesigning the classroom so interaction is introduced in many aspects of the course. This approach has shown to be effective by many instructors in a broad variety of environments. I will demonstrate some of the tools we have developed to foster this interaction.

 

Active Learning and Interactive Teaching: Peer Instruction, at 2020 Pedagogy Buffet, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT, Tuesday, January 21, 2020:
pi_workshop_wesleyan.pdf
The basic goals of Peer Instruction are to encourage and make use of student interaction during lectures, while focusing students' attention on underlying concepts and techniques. The method has been assessed in many studies using standardized, diagnostic tests and shown to be considerably more effective than the conventional lecture approach to teaching. In this workshop, participants will learn about Peer Instruction, serve as the "class" in which Peer Instruction is demonstrated, discuss several models for implementing the technique into the classroom,... Read more about Active Learning and Interactive Teaching: Peer Instruction
Extreme optics with zero-index metamaterials, at PQE 2020, Snowbird, UT, Tuesday, January 7, 2020:
pqe2020.pdf
Nanotechnology has enabled the development of nanostructured composite materials (metamaterials) with exotic optical properties not found in nature. In the most extreme case, we can create materials which support light waves that propagate with infinite phase velocity, corresponding to a refractive index of zero. We have developed a variety of in-plane metamaterial designs that permit obtaining a refractive index of zero in the optical regime. We will report on some of the exotic physics of zero-index metamaterials, including strong enhancement of nonlinear optical phenomena
Tools for Peer Instruction — a workshop, at Congreso Internacional de Innovación Educativa Tecnológico de Monterrey (Monterrey, Mexico), Monday, December 16, 2019:
monterrey_workshop.pdf

 It has been suggested the lack of interaction in large lecture courses is to blame for the many problems facing these courses: declining enrollments, low attendance, poor evaluations, and disappointing retention. We offer a way of redesigning the classroom so interaction is introduced in many aspects of the course. This approach has shown to be effective by many instructors in a broad variety of environments. I will demonstrate some of the tools we have developed to foster this interaction.

Educating the innovators of the 21st century , at Congreso Internacional de Innovación Educativa Tecnológico de Monterrey (Monterrey, Mexico), Monday, December 16, 2019:
innovating_education_tec_de_monterrey.pdf

Can we teach innovation? Innovation requires whole-brain thinking — right- brain thinking for creativity and imagination, and left-brain thinking for planning and execution. Our current approach to education in science and technology, focuses on the transfer of information, developing mostly right-brain thinking by stressing copying and reproducing existing ideas rather than generating new ones. I will show how shifting the focus in lectures from delivering information to team work and creative thinking greatly improves the learning that takes place in the classroom and promotes...

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Getting every student ready for every class, at Webinar, Mercy College (Cambridge, MA), Thursday, November 2, 2017
Over the past decades there has been a concerted push away from passive lecturing to active engagement in the classroom. A successful implementation of the so-called flipped classroom requires students to come to class prepared, either by reading the textbook or watching a pre-recorded video. A variety approaches have been devised to get students to take responsibility for this information transfer, but none manage to get all students to participate, compromising the in-class activities. I will present a new approach to get every student to prepare for every class using a new social learning... Read more about Getting every student ready for every class
Subcellular surgery and nanoneurosurgery, at CLEO-PR 2017 in Singapore, Thursday, August 3, 2017

 

We use femtosecond laser pulses to manipulate sub-cellular structures inside live and fixed cells. Using only a few nanojoules of laser pulse energy, we are able to selectively disrupt individual mitochondria in live bovine capillary epithelial cells, and cleave single actin fibers in the cell cytoskeleton network of fixed human fibro-blast cells. We have also used the technique to micromanipulate the neural network of C. Elegans, a small nematode. Our laser scalpel can snip individual axons without causing any damage to surrounding tissue, allowing us to study the...

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