Courses taught:
See here for an updated list of courses taught in the 3 most recent semesters (bottom half of page)
Undergraduate courses:
Fall semester (odd years) IB 142L Brain, Behavior, and Environment: a research approach (next offered as a neuro capstone course)
Course description: How do experiences and exposures get “under the skin” to impact human development? This course takes a research approach to understanding environmental origins of adult behavior. We begin with foundations in endocrinology, neurobiology, reproduction, and development. This sets the stage for studying how experiences influence development, including nutrition, stress, immune challenges, endocrine disruptors, and more. Students will engage in authentic research using seasonal transitions in rodent physiology and behavior to understand adaptation to changing environments.
Spring semester (each year): IB132: Survey of Human Physiology; Course website
Course description: Mechanisms by which key physiological priorities are maintained in healthy humans. From a basis in elementary theories of information and control, we develop an understanding of homeostasis of cellular composition, structure, and energy metabolism. We then study neural and endocrine signaling in humans, and develop the key concepts of control and homeostasis in all the major organ and multi-organ systems, including cardiovascular, respiratory, renal, metabolic, reproductive, and immune systems, growth and development, and sensory and motor systems.
Faculty director: Berkeley Connect in Biology
Course description: Berkeley Connect is a mentoring program, offered through various academic departments, that helps students build intellectual community. Over the course of a semester, enrolled students participate in regular small-group discussions facilitated by a graduate student mentor (following a faculty-directed curriculum), meet with their graduate student mentor for one-on-one academic advising, attend lectures and panel discussions featuring department faculty and alumni, and go on field trips to campus resources. Students are not required to be declared majors in order to participate.
Graduate courses:
IB 299: Supervised research
IB290: The Social Brain (next offered F25 in Neuroscience)
Course description: Social neuroscience is an effort to understand the biological basis of social behavior and life in social groups. As members of a highly social species, we recognize and interact with many different individuals in specific and nuanced ways. On an evolutionary time-scale, group living has shaped fundamental neural capacities including individual recognition, language development, and affiliation towards others. This seminar focuses on the neural mechanisms that support social behaviors, from individual recognition and social memory to formation of social attachments. We will discuss how different combinations of prosocial and antisocial traits contribute to particular social or mating systems (group living, monogamy, etc.), and how the evolution of social behaviors is reflected in the brain.