Organization
Trinity Washington University
Karobi Moitra
Profile
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Address
address1: Trinity Washington University address2: 125 Michigan Avenue NE city: Washington, DC postal: 20017 region: District of Columbia country: US
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BiographyDr. Karobi Moitra is a Clare Boothe Luce Associate Professor of Molecular Biology at Trinity Washington University in Washington DC and a former Assistant Provost for the Sciences at Trinity. She is a Certified Faculty Developer (CFD) and the Core Leader of the Faculty Development Program at Trinity that is funded by a one million dollar grant from the HHMI. She is a Science Case Fellow for the Science Case Network and has authored 3 engaging case studies for the National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science. Dr. Moitra is also a SENCER Leadership Fellow for The National Center for Science and Civic Engagement (NCSCE) in Washington, DC and is dedicated to instilling the values of civic engagement in her students through introducing civic engagement research projects into the undergraduate curriculum. Students’ in Dr. Moitra’s ‘Critical thinking about disease’ class documented addiction and disease in the local community through student “Photovoice” projects as part of this initiative. As a scientist, Dr. Moitra is dedicated to training & mentoring undergraduate students in genomics/genetics. Her laboratory is comprised of devoted students who work under her supervision on several research projects including the genomics of rare diseases caused by ABC transporters, microbial genome annotation, breast cancer and the MetaSUB (Metagenomics & Metadesign of Subways & Urban Biomes) project. She has received a travel award from the Microbial Genome Annotation Network (MGAN) and a Fellows Award for Research Excellence (FARE) from the NIH and has authored a book ABC Transporters in Human Disease (Morgan & Claypool Publications, 2012) and also numerous scientific papers on her research. At Trinity Dr. Moitra teaches a wide array of courses including Introductory Genetics, Cell and Molecular Biology, Scientific Writing and Directed Research and has received outstanding evaluations from her students. Dr. Moitra has a very active interest in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL) that is centered on the art of storytelling to engage and motivate students in the classroom. In this context Dr. Moitra has authored 2 books, A Journey Through Genetics, parts 1 and 2 (Morgan & Claypool Publications, 2013, 2014) that utilize stories to lead students through the concepts of genetics. She has also authored several peer-reviewed educational articles including ‘Storytelling as an active learning tool to engage students in a genetics classroom’, that was published in the Journal of Microbiology and Biology Education in 2014. She has also conducted several faculty development workshops both locally and at national conferences around this central theme of engaging students through stories.
Dr. Moitra received a BS and MS in Zoology (Cytology and Molecular Genetics) and a PhD in Zoology (Developmental and Molecular Toxicology) from the University of Burdwan in India. She carried out her Post-Doctoral training in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, MD and at the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research at the NIH in Frederick, MD.