E-mail
Irina Krylova
Profile
-
-
OrganizationSan Jose City College, City College of San Francisco, Laney College, Mission College
-
ORCID0000-0002-1678-9267
-
Biography
Hey there,
I was born in the city of Magnitogorsk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnitogorsk on the left (Asian) bank of the Ural river and grew up on Volga river in the city of Samara https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samara,_Russia. I got my undergraduate degree in Biology (Histology and Cytology) and Biology and Chemistry teaching from Samara State University, and did my Diploma project in Novosibirsk Institute of Cytology and Genetics (where a fox domestication project has originated) in the field of Molecular Biology in Korochkin's lab. Before I moved to the United Stated I did research in neurobiology (snail simple nervous systems; studied changes in a single neuron protein profiles in the grape snail Pavlovian conditioning model) and then in the field of atherosclerosis (effect of oxidized cholesterol on lipo- and apolipoprotein profiles on rabbit and rodent models.) After I moved to the US I did research on motor proteins and nuclear receptors protein biochemistry and structural biology. This work has lead to the discovery of the phosphoinositide ligands in NR5A subfamily of nuclear receptor proteins. Most recently I was involved in the development of the live-cell based measurement and diagnostics assays for biologically active compounds such as hormones and endocrine disruptors. I posted my CV where you can see more detail of my education and experience if interested.
I was teaching on and off in parallel with my research work. About three years ago, teaching has become my major activity, amounting, essentially, for a career change. I am very concerned with the current state of education in the great state of California and in the United States in general. I hope to be able to contribute to the narrowing a gap in an access to quality education between the students who are able to attend the best schools, and the rest of the students. In many of my classes, there is no normal distribution in how the students perform, but rather a bimodal distribution, reflecting a national trend in both education and income. Much of this gap is due to the lack of systematic math preparation that spills into the rest of the STEM classes. Introducing quantitative modules in non-majors and majors Biology classes should improve the quality of Biology education and help the students to overcome the lack of confidence in their ability to tackle quantitative problems in Biology and elsewhere. I have not arrived on the collaborative project yet. My thinking is that the existing modules are great as they are and it would be more useful to have more modules including Biochemistry (which is almost none). So this is where I am looking to apply my scientist and educator expertise.
My other major concern is where we are driving now by using 1.25 Earth - that realization is lacking in way too many citizens of Earth including Americans. This is where one can not see the truth without it being presented in numbers and in the past and future perspective. HHMI holiday lectures on the topic are essential and can serve as a source of great many new modules.
I do not particularly like how the basic Biology textbooks are constructed. For my students, they are very difficult to use and even very diligent reading of a textbook is no guarantee of success - the textbooks are multi-layered and hard to navigate without very good prior preparation. I like starting essentially all my classes with the same lecture that starts with the Big Bang, goes though populating Mendeleev's table, geological history of Earth and the history of life on Earth. I believe that links together many of the following concepts. In my mind, teaching Biology in such historical perspective (both the history of life on Earth and the history of discovery) makes the most sense and ties everything in Biology the best, through Evolution.