Teaching
Advancing learning through innovative, evidence-based education.
Teaching philosophy
I teach biology by connecting core concepts to problems students can recognise outside the classroom, and by giving them the chance to contribute to real research rather than to rehearse it.
Two convictions shape how I do this.
The first is that students learn what they handle. Sensory experience, laboratory work and simulation are not illustrations added after the explanation — they are how the explanation becomes usable.
The second is that students must be able to say biology, not only recognise it. Many of my students study science in a language that is not their first; in my experience the obstacle is rarely the concept, it is being able to formulate it. This is why speaking and writing are assessed in my courses, and why I have worked on the language barrier itself as a subject of research.
Courses
Introduction to General Biology — Foundation Course Director, 2020–present. Approximately 24 students per year, five contact hours weekly across fourteen weeks.
Neurophysiology — Premedical Year 2 Module lead within Physiology & Immunology, which I co-direct. Teaching this cohort since 2015. Approximately 50 students per year, four contact hours weekly across six weeks.
Each project began with a problem visible in student feedback, and each produced something that outlived the semester.
The Learn-Apply Synthetic Biology Lab- Foundation Biology
Students had told me that laboratory work felt disconnected from real applications, and that they wanted early exposure to research. I built a project-based module in which students test, characterise and attempt to improve the probiotic qualities of yogurts available in local shops — integrating microbiology, experimental design and translational thinking into one inquiry.
The module produced Qatar's first peer-reviewed publication authored by Foundation students. I am currently preparing an educational paper evaluating its longer-term effect on engagement and scientific literacy.
The Sensory Lab and the Neurosensory Booth- Neurophysiology, Premed 2
Evaluations showed that teaching on sensory systems remained abstract and hard to connect to experience. I developed a laboratory that takes students through practical experiments on taste, smell, sound and light, and in 2024 turned it into a published booklet so that the experiments can be run by any student at home, or by any instructor elsewhere: The Neurosensory Booth: 16 Experiments in Perception and Neurophysiology of Senses for Premedical Studies. Doha, 2024.
The Colors That Do Magic - Case study, National Science Teaching Association
Sanger sequencing and DNA replication were a recurring source of confusion, and lecturing did not resolve it. I developed a simulation using storytelling and visualisation, refined it over several years of classroom use, and published it as a formal case study: The Colors That Do Magic: How Fluorescence Enabled Automation in Nucleic Acid Sequencing (NSTA). It is now used in other institutions to teach genetic engineering through case-based learning.
English–Latin–Arabic Biological Terms: A Glossary for Academic Success. Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing, 2015. A trilingual glossary using a colour-coded system that separates prefix, root and suffix, so that students studying biology in Arabic can read the etymology of the English term.
I teach biology by connecting core concepts to problems students can recognise outside the classroom, and by giving them the chance to contribute to real research rather than to rehearse it.
Two convictions shape how I do this.
The first is that students learn what they handle. Sensory experience, laboratory work and simulation are not illustrations added after the explanation — they are how the explanation becomes usable.
The second is that students must be able to say biology, not only recognise it. Many of my students study science in a language that is not their first; in my experience the obstacle is rarely the concept, it is being able to formulate it. This is why speaking and writing are assessed in my courses, and why I have worked on the language barrier itself as a subject of research.
Courses
Introduction to General Biology — Foundation Course Director, 2020–present. Approximately 24 students per year, five contact hours weekly across fourteen weeks.
Neurophysiology — Premedical Year 2 Module lead within Physiology & Immunology, which I co-direct. Teaching this cohort since 2015. Approximately 50 students per year, four contact hours weekly across six weeks.
Each project began with a problem visible in student feedback, and each produced something that outlived the semester.
The Learn-Apply Synthetic Biology Lab- Foundation Biology
Students had told me that laboratory work felt disconnected from real applications, and that they wanted early exposure to research. I built a project-based module in which students test, characterise and attempt to improve the probiotic qualities of yogurts available in local shops — integrating microbiology, experimental design and translational thinking into one inquiry.
The module produced Qatar's first peer-reviewed publication authored by Foundation students. I am currently preparing an educational paper evaluating its longer-term effect on engagement and scientific literacy.
The Sensory Lab and the Neurosensory Booth- Neurophysiology, Premed 2
Evaluations showed that teaching on sensory systems remained abstract and hard to connect to experience. I developed a laboratory that takes students through practical experiments on taste, smell, sound and light, and in 2024 turned it into a published booklet so that the experiments can be run by any student at home, or by any instructor elsewhere: The Neurosensory Booth: 16 Experiments in Perception and Neurophysiology of Senses for Premedical Studies. Doha, 2024.
The Colors That Do Magic - Case study, National Science Teaching Association
Sanger sequencing and DNA replication were a recurring source of confusion, and lecturing did not resolve it. I developed a simulation using storytelling and visualisation, refined it over several years of classroom use, and published it as a formal case study: The Colors That Do Magic: How Fluorescence Enabled Automation in Nucleic Acid Sequencing (NSTA). It is now used in other institutions to teach genetic engineering through case-based learning.
English–Latin–Arabic Biological Terms: A Glossary for Academic Success. Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing, 2015. A trilingual glossary using a colour-coded system that separates prefix, root and suffix, so that students studying biology in Arabic can read the etymology of the English term.
