Dr. Alyssa Taylor is an Associate Teaching Professor in bioengineering with twelve years of teaching experience across introductory, laboratory, and senior design courses. Dr. Taylor’s teaching contributions have been recognized through multiple teaching awards including the 2020 Distinguished Teaching Award from the University of Washington and the 2022 ASEE Pacific Northwest Section Outstanding Teaching Award. As a leader in bioengineering curriculum development, Dr. Taylor seeks to prepare students to engage in Universal Design, considering accessibility in their design work. Dr. Taylor aims to foster the development of inclusive, thoughtful engineering graduates who will integrate their technical and professional skills to positively impact society and she is excited to contribute to the educational journey of UCSD bioengineering students.

Dr. Vira Kravets earned her Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Colorado Colorado Springs in 2017 and completed her Postdoctoral training in Islet Physiology and Diabetes at the Univerisy of Colorado Denver – Anschutz Medical Campus.

Research: Her research focus is electrical, paracrine, and neural networks of insulin-producing beta-cells and in healthy and diabetes. Using advanced optical imaging and computational modeling Dr Kravets studies subpopulations of cells which disproportionately affect the rest of the population and are important in diabetes pathogenesis.

Prior to UC San Diego: Dr. Kravets became a Leader in Type1 Diabetes Awardee and a Burroughs Wellcome Fund awardee for the Careers at the Scientific Interfaces. She is a mom and a yoga teacher.

Dr. Reem Khojah received her PhD degree in the Bioengineering department from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Her educational research focuses on developing collaborative learning strategies tailored for bioengineering students with diverse backgrounds and skills.

Bioengineering Research Interests:

Developing mini-organs in the lab with novel microrobotic systems that enable Artificial Intelligence (AI) to be part of the creative process in drug discovery pipelines.

Khojah aims to understand how the tumor microenvironment orchestrates drug-resistance pathways which will generate new insight in cancer prognosis and drug response.