Teaching and Outreach

UR COURSES

Applied Genomics (BIO 257,BIO457)

This course is designed to introduce students to applications of genomics to problems in genetics, evolution and human health and demography. Students will receive hands-on training in genomic methods, where they will learn to apply next generation sequencing (NGS) and other high throughput assays to current biological problems. Students will read and discuss primary literature, and come up with a hypothesis about an unanswered question in Biology that they will then test as a group. Applied Genomics is part of the core curriculum for the Computational Biology Major at UR.

Last offered fall 2022

Students present their BIO257/457 research projects at the final poster session in Fall 2018

 

Advanced topics in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (BIO 474, BIO476)

Topic: Genetic Conflict and Selfish Genetic elements.  Taught by Drs. Werren and Larracuente, this course is a whirlwind introduction to selfish genetic elements. This course is part of the EEB graduate program but  interested undergraduates are encouraged to e-mail alarracu@bio.rochester.edu to discuss the possibility of enrolling.

Last offered Spring 2023

E2G2 Journal Club

Join us as we discuss interesting papers in evolutionary biology. We meet on Wednesdays at noon in HH316. Anyone is welcome (and all are encouraged) to attend!

Offered every semester, rotating faculty

 

OUTREACH

Upward Bound

The Larracuente Lab runs a workshop on insect mating for local high school students as part of the Upward Bound program. Students learn about courtship in different insect species like fruit flies, parasitic wasps and fireflies.

Rochester Science Café

The Science Café provides a forum for interactive discussions on current topics with scientists from the University of Rochester and RIT.  The group meets once a month on Tuesdays at 7pm in the Community Room of Barnes and Noble in Pittsford Plaza. Anyone is welcome to attend!

Amanda’s café was a presentation on the “Mysteries of the Genome” (11/24/15).

OTHER

Hackathons! The Goergen Institute for Data Science working group in life and biomedical data science (co-chaired by Drs. Andrew McDavid, Matthew McCall, and Amanda Larracuente) hosts annual hackathons open to anyone at the University at any experience level. Click here to read an NSF MCB blog post about our hackathons. E-mail alarracu@bio.rochester.edu for information about the next event.