Alistair Dias

Dr. Alistair Dias: Dr. Dias is a long serving member of the University community, completing an undergraduate B.Sc. specialist degree in Biological Chemistry then both a M.Sc. and his Ph.D. in the Chemistry Department at the University of Toronto specializing in metalloprotein function and characterization. In 2009, Dr. Dias was hired as a Lecturer in the Human Biology Program and in 2015 was promoted to an Associate Professor, Teaching Stream.  For several years, he has been teaching and developing the core 3rd year lab courses in our various specialization areas, including Neuroscience, Human Biology, Health & Disease and Fundamental Genetics and its Applications. He has shaped these lab courses to introduce students to foundational and modern experiments in their respective fields as well as to provide students an opportunity to develop and excel in their scientific writing and literature mining skills.  In addition, he is also the instructor for two 4th year lecture series courses discussing topics in Integrative and Complementary Medicine and the self created course, The Biology of the Human Metallome (the use of transition metals for human function).  He has used these courses as a platform to pursue and expand upon his pedagogical interests including investigating the use and benefits of video/online content, inverted classroom environments (discussion-based) and creating innovative assignments/assessments promoting critical and analytical thinking.  He currently has plans to explore the use of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) tools in teaching and developing new open access course modules which make use of this emerging and exciting technology.