TeachDNA

Background: academic research in molecular/cellular/developmental biology. Aim: making molecular biology more accessible, using puzzle-toys and cartoons.

Years of experience developing "Essentials of Biology" course for non-science majors at lower-echelon colleges, serving many students with zero content knowledge from high school, low literacy, and underdeveloped thinking skills, inspires me to try and meet learners near where they're coming from. Nature is awesome, science is fun, and the basics of molecular biology is not all that complicated!

Years and years ago I won an NIH postdoctoral fellowship to study the coordination of cytoplasmic polarity with cell cycle events in the early embryo of Caenorhabditis elegans. I ended up studying something else, but that's science: serendipitous! Now I'm carrying on the work of Judy Hauck, a shining teacher who urged the creation of a new kind of DNA structure modeling kit, based on cartoons in the amazing book The Way Life Works (1995). Judy's father Mahlon Hoagland was a pioneer of molecular biology, and an amateur artist too; he partnered with professional artist Bert Dodson to create this book, and then the modular kinetic sculpture which we now call PlayDNA!

I flunked high school genetics. I found it extremely boring, so I spent class time drawing comics or sleeping. My own parents are scientifically illiterate. I didn't discover science until second year of college - serendipity again. As a youngster, I thought I would grow up to make a living drawing comic books. But I never had a really good story to tell. Now I do!

More information can be found online: TeachDNA.net