I am convinced that science and research are educational activities and professions. Our daily goal is to learn what we don’t know yet. Then, we communicate our new knowledge to the community and the society. 

The educational flow is the basis of my research lab: mentor – mentee interactions, relationships between colleagues, with other scientists outside the lab, with new members.

My lab aims to be an educational environment for every member. 

In addition to my degrees in chemical sciences (M.Sc. and Ph.D.), I earned a M.Ed. comparable degree and have dedicated half of my life to teach in the classroom from kindergarten, into high school, and university (undergraduate and graduate students). I also had the opportunity to teach in disadvanged contexts and rural areas, and work with homeless community members. I saw the power of being a teacher and how education changes lives, especially lives of those in disadvantaged areas. I realized how much my students can benefit from my help in terms of their career aspirations.

Science education is a passion to me; thus, I have also performed research on this topic which is reflected in five publications (see below). Since I joined UNC-Chapel Hill, I am involved in formal teaching in several graduate school courses (GMB curriculum, CBP curriculum, and Pathology curriculum) and I have also been serving as a co-mentor in the First Year Group from the Biological & Biomedical Sciences Program (BBSP) (2016-present). My goals as an educator are that students at their respective levels: (i) understand and build scientific models within the biomedical fields; (ii) critically think about science discoveries in the society context; (iii) develop scientific questions and drive solid approaches to answer them.

Moreover, I am committed to create and maintain an educational philosophy within my research laboratory because I want to help undergraduate and graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows to develop strong scientific careers. As soon as I joined UNC-Chapel Hill, I participated in the Mentoring Workshop organized by our BBSP graduate program. There, I learned and equipped myself with new skills to properly mentor trainees in my lab. In my lab, trainees have a main role in developing their Ph.D. theses or postdoctoral research projects. We meet weekly in lab meetings where we discuss the data and biweekly in a one-on-one setting to analyze the experiments and plan the next steps. My trainees are encouraged to attend seminars on campus and external scientific conferences in our field to present and discuss their work and the work of others.

I encourage my trainees to apply for external grants, fellowships and awards and I mentor them during the process of preparing competitive applications. I think those are exceptional educational opportunities to learn scientific skills such as writing, critical reading of the literature, hypothesis generation, interpretation of data and also resilience while navigating feedback and reviewers comments. So far, under my mentorship three trainees have obtained NSF-GRFP fellowships (Hannah Wiedner, Gabrielle Gentile, and Nicole Rivera), one trainee has obtained an NIH/NIAMS-F31 predoctoral fellowship (Emma Hinkle), another one an NIH/NHLBI-F32 postdoctoral fellowship (Adam Black), three trainees were awarded spots in NIH/NIGMS internal T32 training grants at UNC-Chapel Hill (Emma Hinkle, Hannah Wiedner, and Gabrielle Gentile), and several of my mentees have received different travel awards to attend scientific conferences including the Company of Biologists, Cold Spring Harbor Lab meetings, the Experimental Biology Annual Meeting, the Biophysical Society Annual Meeting, the North Carolina RNA society, the RNA society, among others. I believe that collectively these educational opportunities help trainees to develop as solid young scientists and good colleagues.

My goal as a mentor is to create and maintain the educational philosophy within the lab and to help each member to develop a scientific career, to grow up as solid scientists, and as good colleagues.

My training plan will include: training in the bench, regular one-on-one meetings to discuss the project (s), results, and troubleshooting, internal lab meetings, group meetings with other research teams, opportunities to attend to seminars and meetings, to practice your presentations, to learn and grow up in writing and presenting your results and proposals (manuscripts, posters, abstracts, fellowship applications, etc.), developing projects, career discussions.

My academic training as educator, teacher, and mentor

  • Training: “The Understanding and Responding to Microaggressions”, Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity (DEI) initiatives, UNC-Chapel Hill, School of Medicine, 4/2022
  • Workshop about Diversity, UNC-Chapel Hill, School of Medicine, 12/2020
  • Mentoring and diversity  course, UNC-Chapel Hill, BBSP, 4/2016-6/2016
  • M. Ed. comparable. Chemistry Education, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, 3/2001-5/2005

My experience as educator and teacher in formal settings

  • 2017 – present. Member of Graduate School Thesis Committees at UNC-Chapel Hill: 12 ongoing + 6 finalized
  • 2016 – present. Teaching at UNC-Chapel Hill: Cell Biology, Cell Physiology, Pathology, PREP-workshops
  • 2007 – 2011. Teaching at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina: Molecular and Cell Biology, Organic Chemistry, Chemical Biology, Food Chemistry, Inorganic, Analytical & Physical Chemistry, Bases of Analytical Chemistry, Biotechnology of Plants, Microbiology, Topics and Concepts of Biotechnology
  • 2004 – 2011. Teaching in high school: Chemistry, Physical-Chemistry, Religion
  • 2004 – 2011. Teaching in elementary schools: Science lab, Religion
  • 2002 – 2004. Teaching in kindergarten: Religion

Research publications in science education (in Spanish)

  1. Galagovsky L, Giudice J. (2015). Stoichiometry and the law of mass conservation: aspects to be analyzed from chemical languages. Ciência & Educação (Bauru), 21 (1): 85-99.
  2. Alí S, Di Giacomo M, Galagovsky L, Gemelli M, Giudice J, Lacolla L, Pepa L, Peralta CP. (2010). Chemistry books: communication or non-communication? Industria y Química, 362: 61-64.
  3. Giudice J, Alonso M. (2009). Analogies created by the students: instruments to teach the discontinuous nature of the matter. Enseñanza de las Ciencias, Extra VIII: 1736-1739.
  4. Giudice J, Galagovsky L. (2008). Teaching students to model the discontinuous nature of matter: an approach. Revista Electrónica de Enseñanza de las Ciencias, 7: 629-658.

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