Courses taught:
CHM ENG 182 – Nanoscience and Engineering Biotechnology
This nanoscale science and biomolecular engineering course will cover emerging topics in applied biotechnology. Topics include bioanalytical chemistry, recombinant protein generation and purification, cell culture, immunology, nanomaterials in biology, biotoxicity, and biomolecular sensors. The scope of the course will also probe the interface of biology with nanomaterials, and standard microscopic and spectroscopic techniques to image both biological structures and nanoscale materials.
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CHM ENG 141 – Chemical Engineering Thermodynamics
Thermodynamic behavior of pure substances and mixtures. Properties of solutions, phase equilibria. Thermodynamic cycles. Chemical equilibria for homogeneous and heterogeneous systems. Thermodynamic analysis of chemically-reacting systems.
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CHM ENG 154 – Unit Operations
Experiments in physical measurements, fluid mechanics, heat and mass transfer, kinetics, and separation processes. Emphasis on investigation of basic relationships important in engineering. Experimental design, analysis of results, and preparation of engineering reports are stressed.
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NEUROSC 290A – Neuroscience Research Methods and Professional Development
This course provides a broad overview of modern neuroscience research methods and topics in research ethics. A team of faculty will present on a wide range of modern methods including classical approaches, analysis methods, microscopy, data analysis and interpretation. The professional development meetings will focus on topics relevant to mentor-student relationships and principles of scientific rigor and reproducibility.
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Teaching Philosophy
My teaching philosophy is shaped in large part by my academic background. I hold two bachelor’s degrees in physics and chemistry, and a doctorate in chemical physics. I have taught courses in physics, chemistry, biochemistry, and chemical engineering, and enjoy teaching both introductory and advanced course topics with an interdisciplinary view of how didactic training can translate to real-world applications.
As faculty, we are teaching in an era in which multidisciplinary work is increasingly common in science careers. Therefore, it is important to acknowledge that each student in a given class will have a unique academic background spanning across several disciplines, and will therefore also have different academic goals. Such is both the strength and challenge of teaching classroom material that is multidisciplinary in nature: there will be a diverse set of personal goals and academic backgrounds within any given class. My teaching philosophy is centered on teaching and evaluating my courses in a manner that gauges student learning and understanding. I aim to enable students to take material presented in a class, and apply it beyond the broader context of the course syllabus. Teaching in a multidisciplinary era not only invites, but also necessitates ingenuity and leadership in developing academic programs that span across multiple disciplines.
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Mentoring Philosophy
As a physicist by training, my goal as head of the Landry Lab is to bring together scientists from a broad range of disciplines to build tools for human health and sustainability. The early days of my lab made visible a broad range of neurotransmitters, neuromodulators, and neuropeptides with nanoscale tools that we and others now use to study synaptic-scale neurochemical signaling in the brain. Today, my lab’s research program focuses on using these tools to study addiction, neurodegeneration, and social interactions in various animals and have made numerous discoveries that were possible only due to the synaptic scale resolution of our probes. My lab has also pioneered the new and growing field of agricultural nanobiotechnology, creating nanoscale carriers of DNA, RNA, and protein alongside the development of many other plant synthetic biology tools. My lab now uses our internationally-patented plant biotechnology tools to genetically edit plants without transgene integration in a manner that allows us and our industry partners to bioengineer crops of agricultural relevance without their regulatory oversight as genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
Within my lab, as part of my mentoring practices, I work with each mentee to develop a research environment and mentoring partnership that helps each person reach their unique career goals. To this end, I provide professional development assessments for all of my mentees through annual individual development plans (IDPs), effective communication workplans, and career development worksheets, tools which are disseminated here. I attribute much of my knowledge in this space to the Certificate in Business Administration that I earned through night school while completing my PhD, and am glad to be implementing this knowledge to train the next generation of scientists. Our lab’s alumni include principal investigators, professors, research scientists, science policy leaders, entrepreneurs, and many other phenomenal careers!