TEACHING
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Teaching through research
Based on many years of our collective experience we are convinced that « teaching through research » is a remarkable and necessary facet of being a researcher. Such teaching is based on mentoring of hands-on experimentation, driven by scientific questioning brought up through the interaction with the mentees (from school kids to full-fledged investigators). It allows us to learn new concepts, methodologies, speak the language of many disciplines (chemistry, physics, math, computer sciences, biology and medicine) and take advantage of the emergent collaborative framework constructed by students and scientists who thrive to understand the unknown.
Significantly, in the past 15 years A. Lindner and F. Taddei co-conceived, taught and directed the ‘interdisciplinary approaches to life sciences’ AIRE Master program, the FIRE Doctoral School, and FdV Bachelor program. All our researchers and staff, from PhD students to engineers and Fellows, continue to be involved in teaching and mentoring, primarily through CRI-hosted programs.
Mentoring
We mentored > 400 students from diverse backgrounds in critically addressing open scientific questions, conception and execution of their research projects. Many of these were individual, 3-6 month internships by Master students. However, they also include mentorship and supervision of various group projects. Every year, groups of students from undergraduate to master level (on average 12 in each team) work on a synthetic biology project and participate in the iGEM competition. We also run a yearly project-based bachelor course focusing on interdisciplinary life sciences (teams of 4 students, working on projects proposed by researchers), and a semester-long Open Science project course for master students (teams of 5-10 students, designing and implementing participatory research projects in health and biomedicine).
Courses taught
Bachelor Level
Network theory, Physics, Neuroscience, Genetics workshop, Student Collaborative Research.
Master Level
Synthetic Biology, Physics (Bootcamp), Evolution (Bootcamp), Cognition (Bootcamp), Critical Analysis of Research Articles, Introduction to Robotics, Big Data, Research Design, Research Projects, Cognition and Technology, SDG – Learning by doing, Principles of Learning, Learning everywhere, Critical Thinking, Open Science.
PhD Level
Network Workshop, Creating Interdisciplinary Research Project, Philosophy of Science, Critical Assessment and publication of Research Articles.