PhD Candidate in Pharmacy with specialization in Neuroscience, Killam GTA award for best teaching at UBC, Creative learning, Example led teaching

Sneha is my senior in the lab (Dr. Kumar's lab at UBC). She is also my mentor and has taught me various complicated lab techniques like western blot, immunocytochemistry, cell culturing and ELISA with a lot of patience which is truly commendable.

Apart from having a tremendous passion for research and topics related to neuroscience, she also has a zeal for teaching others. I have experienced this myself, seeing her dedication and sincerity while giving lectures and teaching techniques to summer students. Moreover, being a new member of the lab she has always made sure that I was comfortable and would always check on me if I was facing any difficulty during my Masters program for which I am ever grateful.

One particular incident which I vividly recall is her teaching a lecture on pharmacokinetics of drugs of abuse, which I had an opportunity to attend. The class was conducted absolutely brilliantly, she was able to explain the complex topic in a simplified manner using interesting examples so that students could grasp the content better. The slides in her lectures were also made by giving a lot of thought even to minute details, which is quite impressive to say the least. She also made sure that everyone in class participated in discussions and were engaged in class by providing different scenarios for the class to work on towards the last 20 minutes of the lecture. This enabled the students to reinforce whatever they were taught in class in solving the problems which further strengthened their understanding on the topic. Students were also encouraged to interrupt her and ask questions whenever they had a doubt during the course of the lecture. Personally I was amazed at her capability to create a safe space for the students to interact and be curious about whatever they were learning.

Additionally, this year she also won the prestigious Killam graduate teaching assistant award which is quite competitive and is provided to handful of graduate students who have displayed exemplary teaching capabilities as teaching assistant at UBC.

Based on the above mentioned points, it is evident that Sneha is an one of a kind mentor who is passionate about her research, topics related to neuroscience along with the fact that she cares deeply about her students. I am extremely fortunate to have her as my mentor who has always been extremely supportive during my graduate studies. It is difficult to find a person who loves what they do and want to share the knowledge to other people apart from making sure that they have a safe space to learn, explore and be curious about science and develop passion for it. I believe the students would be extremely fortunate to have her as a mentor and surely be amazed at the way she can teach science in a simplified way by using interesting scenarios to explain different complicated concepts.